


AU Yeah August (2020) - Prowl and Jazz

by dragonofdispair



Series: Unrelated Prompt Responses [80]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: AU August 2020, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Drabble Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 21,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25660675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: Yeah. This thing again. XD
Relationships: Jazz/Prowl
Series: Unrelated Prompt Responses [80]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/239915
Comments: 654
Kudos: 178





	1. Writing You A Love Song (Cafe AU)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rizobact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/gifts).



> It’s still August 1st I swear!
> 
> This has been a year hasn’t it? I totally lost track of time and Riz and I only just got the list today (go give Riz’s fic some love, btw). Between that and the D&D game I had to prepare and run today, this is a bit late and rough, but I’m doing the thing! Woohoo!
> 
> Unbeta’d, as always.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes Prowl three days to introduce himself.

## Day One: 

A hand came into his field of view, the crowd-noise he could only faintly hear took on that pitch and tone that meant someone was trying to talk to him specifically. Jazz looked up from his tablet screen and pulled the bulky bluetooth headphones down around his neck. He looked up. A police officer! Geeze. What’d he do to deserve that? “Sorry. Whazzat?”

The officer looked only mildly annoyed. “I asked if I could sit here for a moment. This is the only free chair right now.” 

A little surprised to see that that was true, Jazz looked around in bewilderment. When had it gotten so crowded? “Yeah, sure mech.”

“Thank you.” 

Jazz found himself watching the graceful, precise movements. Setting down his drink, then his plate, then the folder he was carrying, pulling out the chair, lowering himself into it… It was a smooth and practiced sequence, like a kata. His new tablemate looked like a standard, clunky-framed Praxan, but he moved like a song.

Ooh… moved like a song. Jazz turned back to his computer and jotted the line into the margins of the doc he was working on. He didn’t know where it would go yet but it was worth remembering! He pulled the headphones back onto his audios and sank back into the melody he’d written. 

.

.

.

## Day Two:

“Are you new here?” the officer asked before Jazz could pull up his headphones again.

He paused. “What makes you say that, copper?”

His tablemate’s nose wrinkled at the nickname, but he didn’t comment. “You just seemed surprised at how crowded this place gets during the breakfast rush,” he elaborated, “but you’re acting like a regular: same drink, same spot, same activity. You’re not a regular though, not yet. Or at least not here. Either this isn’t your usual place, or it’s not your usual time.”

“No way you’d know that unless you were a regular,” Jazz pointed out to buy a few seconds to think, poking his stylus in the mech’s direction.

“Which I am,” he admitted easily. “I usually do not stay and eat though. I’m on vacation.”

“Staycation,” Jazz needled, because who kept going to their regular work cafe during their vacations?

The officer looked pained. “Yes. Fine. Staycation, if you must.”

“I really must,” Jazz chuckled. He started to pull his headphones back on…

“If you don’t want to answer the question, please just say so,” the officer insisted plaintively. He picked at his pastry with his fingers like a bird would, breaking it into small pieces. It was, Jazz thought, an unexpectedly insecure gesture. Not just from an officer, but from someone who had seemed so poised yesterday.

“Questio--oh. Sorry.” Did he want to answer the question? There wasn’t any harm in it… “I just moved here. Took me a while to find this place, but I like the way it sounds.”

“I’m surprised you can hear anything in those headphones.”

 _Scoff._ “Shows what you know.” Just because he couldn’t hear specifics, or words, didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of the rise and fall of conversations around him, of the _energy_ thrumming through the room. The crowd had a sound. The mechs cooking, bussing tables, even the plain-as-slag muzak all made a place sound unique. Special.

“I apologize,” the officer said, looking down at his pastry which he was still picking into pieces. _Pick. Pick. Pick._ If Jazz watched his hands and not his face or frame, he looked like a nervous newling about to ask his first crush to a date. 

Absently, Jazz jotted that thought down. It didn’t fit the meter of the song, yet, but it sounded good. Nice opening to a love song. “Sure mech.” 

He pulled up his headphones.

.

.

.

## Day Three:

“For a mech on vacation, you’re carrying around a lot of work.” This time it was Jazz who started the conversation after the usual exchange of the officer requesting permission to share his table.

“Vacation,” the officer said dryly, sliding into the chair and opening the ever-present file, “does not negate the need to turn the paperwork in on time.”

Not willing to verbally agree, but acknowledging he probably had a point, Jazz just hummed. “Kind of a waste of a vacation though.”

“As you pointed out yesterday,” the mech retorted mildly, starting to pick at his pastry, “I am on a staycation.” 

“Still kind of a waste,” was Jazz’s opinion. “At least tell me you’ve got something fun planned. There’s a water-slide park right outside town, ain’t there?” 

“There is.” The officer picked up one of the pieces he’d broken off of his pastry. Jazz thought he’d eat it, but he decided not, putting it back down to pick it into smaller pieces. “And I’ve been. It’s not the sort of place that is very fun when by oneself, in all honesty.”

Jazz hummed again. There was that. 

“Have you been yet?” the mech spoke up quickly when Jazz’s attention started turning down to his tablet and his half-finished song. “To the water park?”

“Haven’t.” More from lack of interest than lack of time. Jazz was a nightlife sort of mech and the water park was expensive. 

“Would you like to?”

Jazz looked up only to find the officer was looking down at his plate. His pastry, the victim of his nervous fidgeting, was mere crumbs. He thought about it, and he thought about his tablemate. 

“Ain’t going on a date with a mech who won’t even say his name,” he decided, though he kept the bite from his tone. The mech was shy, not a creep. “And you should probably look at me.”

The officer’s gaze shot up, and Jazz saw the hint of alarm in his optics before the neutral, controlled expression slammed down. “My name is Prowl,” he said flatly, like a drone. 

Ooooh yeah. Really shy. “I’m Jazz,” he returned, reaching out to rescue the desecrated corpse of the pastry by pulling his hands away from it, “and I’d love to go to the water park with you.”

“And the rest of the staycation?” Prowl murmured, optics locked on their intertwined fingers. 

Jazz laughed. “Let’s see how the water park goes.”

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Magnolia_in_Black_Velvet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet/pseuds/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet) wrote a beautiful song to be the song Jazz is writing in this chapter. Go read it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898929) and give it some kudos and comment love. ♥


	2. How to Watch the Stars Die (Wings AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz and Prowl and the cycles of death, loss, and renewal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question: What do you do when your AU prompt is canon for your fandom/pairing?

Jazz edged along the cliff where one side of the volcano had broken off and crumbled down onto the plain below. The rubble of that long-ago geologic activity could have been disturbingly familiar to the Autobots who had once called blasted, bombed, crumbling cities home, but time moved differently on Earth. Cybertron had been a ruin for far longer than this formation had existed, but where the timelessness of Cybertron had frozen the aftermath of its disasters in temporal stasis, Earth kept going. The rubble-strewn plain below him was no lifeless ruin, but a vibrant sun-soaked grassland dotted with oases where the broken rocks provided enough shade for dew to collect and nourish more delicate life. 

Humans too recovered their ruins, paving them over and building them up again, over and over, while Cybertron simply waited, dead, in space. Earth hadn’t just given the Autobots and Decepticons new allies and new fuel, but also a new perspective. The inevitable onset of entropy wasn’t just destruction, but in the rebuilding, over and over and over again until the heat death of the universe. The worst thing they could all do was give up. That was when they lost. 

He shook away the maudlin thoughts and dug his rarely-shown claws into the next handhold. This climb always made him maudlin and introspective. 

It was all Prowl’s fault and Jazz said so as he pulled himself up onto the not-really-a-ledge next to the tactician. “You need to find someplace else to brood, mech. Yer making me all schmaltzy.”

Prowl, who had for the moment discarded his Datsun disguise and his more human-friendly base form both, simply gazed back at him placidly with unemotive compound optics. His proboscis twitched, unfurling slightly and Jazz wasn’t so far removed from their true forms to miss the expression of condescension. 

“Yeah,” Jazz huffed in agreement. “I get it. I don’t _have_ to follow you up here.”

Metallic feather-scales rustled and Prowl unfurled his two pairs of large, delicate wings to invite Jazz under them, closer. Grinning, Jazz scooted over. Secondary appendages extended from Prowl’s thoracic area and delicate tarsal hooks groomed over Jazz’s plating. That always felt nice. Fingers were good and all, but there was something just really nostalgic about being groomed like this. Prowl was the only one, at least that Jazz knew of, who reverted to his past-form to brood. 

Earth had helped them all move on, given them the insight into entropy that they all needed, and so true to their namesake, they had transformed, but… It wasn’t a coincidence that Prowl came out here, to this stark reminder of the cycles of renewal they were all trying to adopt. To think about their new, alien forms and the mindset that came with that change.

 _“Do you think you’ll ever fly?”_ Prowl sent via extremely short-ranged comms. This form didn’t have the vocalizer that had been first designed for ambassadors to aliens and then adopted by all of them when they’d changed into forms humans would be comfortable with.

Jazz just shrugged, feeling Prowl’s feather-scaled wings move against his plating. He didn’t miss his own natural form the way Prowl did, but then he’d never really had a chance to experience it. He’d only just emerged from his adult-form chrysalis when the _Ark_ had launched and hadn’t had a chance to try out his own wings. Then, upon crashing on Earth, they’d all gone into chrysalis again and emerged a bit more human-friendly and Jazz _liked_ humans so no he didn’t feel nostalgic.

Besides, that form had been a Jazz who understood change without loss, understood death without renewal, and he wasn’t too keen on going back to that. Change and loss and death and renewal had brought a vibrancy, a _life_ back to Jazz’s world that stagnancy had stripped from Jazz’s larvalhood before the war had destroyed his world. 

He ran his fingers over the feather-scales of Prowl’s fluttery wing, right now wrapped around him like a blanket covering them both. Jazz admired the iridescent not-colors of them. Nano-structures covering their surface scattered and refracted light into shimmering patterns of every wavelength so very different the flat, painted-on colors of Prowl’s car-form. There were layers and layers of messages in those colors, Jazz recalled. Health and status and fuel quality and a thousand other things that Jazz’s current optic configuration couldn’t even perceive, as “visible” light was shattered into its components and altered, polarized, used. 

Incomplete understanding or not, Jazz did think they were beautiful. Something in him ached to see it; the rest shied away, unwilling to contemplate becoming that Jazz again. He didn’t know how Prowl could do it, revert and brood and then come back to the present, to a world that _meant_ something.

 _“You should,”_ Prowl insisted, extending his proboscis in emphasis. _“Even just once.”_

“Maybe someday,” Jazz acknowledged the possibility, though right now he just couldn’t. When Earth was rubble and stardust and humans were gone or themselves changed beyond recognition. When the stars were different, burned out, died, reborn and their race then suffered under the weight of these unchanging humanlike forms… maybe then.

Or maybe both he and Prowl and all of them would have adopted something else, something new, by then and what-once-was would be a moot point not worth revisiting.

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Answer: ~~Make it weirder.~~ Sooo… “Transformer” apparently means butterflies. B/c chrysalises. IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE. XD
> 
> P.S. WTF is a Bender AU? Or a “Reverse Crush”? Those are days four and ten’s prompts and I’ve never heard of them…


	3. In Sickness And In Health (Time Travel AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No… Time travel would not be totally rad actually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still Aug 3, I swear!
> 
> Chapter Warnings: Character death. Also disease. I’m sorry did you come here for fluff?

“Show me to this so-called prophet,” Lord Prowl told the sept-leader who’d come to greet him. Stablemechs took his pony and those of his entourage to be fed and groomed and rested. If the lord actually stayed, he would take the same ponies when he departed the castle. If not, he would only stay the night and take different ones in the morning. 

“Of course, my lord,” sept-leader Bluestreak said mildly. He did not bow, but then he was (somehow, Prowl was not sure how without consulting a genealogist) a cousin to him and family was not held to the same standards. He acknowledged him verbally and that was enough. “Did you bring--?”

“Yes, yes,” Prowl waved away the concern and gestured to his escort. “Father Skids is an expert in validation.” Skids broke from the group of other clergymechs, summoned by his name, and bowed to both Lord Prowl and sept-lord Bluestreak. “And we wish to get on with the validation as quickly as possible so where is the prophet?”

“Confined to his guest room, my lord,” Bluestreak finally answered. “He has taken sick of late and under the care of the doctor.”

“A doctor?” Prowl’s brow furrowed as he followed the sept-lord from the courtyard and into the castle’s walls. The sharp bite of the wind was blunted, and they shook the snow from their plating. It was still quite chilly of course, but sheltering stone and warm furnishings did much to ameliorate the most unpleasant aspects of being outside in the weather. “He’s sick with the plague?”

“Ah, no.” Bluestreak shook his head. “It’s just a case of the pox, but before the fever took his sense he insisted on a doctor and described the methods that should be used to care for him. The diatrade was absent bloodletting to balance the humors, but the doctor said that’s unnecessary in a case of the pox anyway. You’ve had it, right?”

“Of course,” Prowl snapped, resisting the urge to adjust his cloak. His plating still bore the scars of the disease, especially on his doorwings and back. A bad omen that would have kept him from ascending to the title of Clan Lord had the disease not taken the lives of his two siblings as well. 

“I meant no offense, my lord. It was part of the mech’s ravings: he wants no one who has not had the disease to be allowed near him.” Bluestreak shrugged, echoing both Prowl’s and Skids’ bafflement. “The doctor is one of those who believes the mech’s prophecies and so he’s been acting as a… gatekeeper of sorts.”

“How odd. Skids?”

“I’ve not had it, my lord,” the priest answered. “It rarely comes to the monasteries. We should have brought Father Stripe. He’s the last one in our monastery who has, for the moment at least.”

Prowl did not ask if he had any scars from it. Everyone had scars somewhere from the pox. Even Skids did not believe it would not come for them in the monastery eventually.

“Here,” Bluestreak directed them to a door. The herald began to open it. He was interrupted as the door was yanked open from the inside. The doctor glared out at them. The herald started to speak but was silenced by a combination of the doctor’s ire and a reassuring hand on his shoulder from Bluestreak. “Doctor Ratchet. How is the patient.” 

“Dying,” the doctor, Ratchet apparently, snapped brusquely. 

“I’m sorry to hear it,” the sept-lord murmured softly. “Lord Prowl came with a priest to verify the mech’s status as a holy prophet.”

“I don’t care if the church ‘verifies’ him,” Ratchet growled. “It’s not like there’s a point now. It’s so stupid. He was _healthy._ Exceptionally so. Well-fed, not a single mark of injury or disease or hardship on him, only to die of the first, stupid ailment that caught up with him.”

“I would still like to see him,” Prowl interjected. 

The doctor looked him up and then down. “You’ve had the pox, right?”

“Yes,” Prowl bit out, annoyed at having to answer that question for the second time in only a few minutes. Skids shook his head.

“He stays then. You can come in, but don’t upset him!” Ratchet let the door open wider. “Just you though, there isn’t a lot of room in here.” 

“I don’t need to see him again,” Bluestreak bowed out quickly. “We’ll wait here.” 

And so Prowl entered the sickroom without his entourage. The walls were hung with white sheets that swayed lightly in the breeze. One blocked the view of the bed from the door. The room was unexpectedly cool for a sickroom, the window cracked open to deliberately let in the draft and the fire banked. The snow had built up on the inner edge of the windowsill. 

“It’s the fever that’s killing him,” Ratchet explained. “He said he should be kept warm until his temperature reached one-hundred and five degrees -- whatever those are -- at which point he would need to be kept cool. Here, put these on.” The doctor held out a perplexing square of cloth with straps on all four of the corners. 

When the doctor adjusted his own square from sitting around his neck to covering his face Prowl understood and regarded his own covering with distaste. “Why?” 

“There are, I don’t know, poisons of some kind on a person’s breath that will sicken you. Or make him sicker,” Ratchet shrugged. “He wasn’t too clear about that point, but he’s a fragging angel so I’m not going to argue with him when he’s trying to tell me how to take care of him better.” 

“An angel?” Prowl asked in disbelief. “I had heard that he was a prophet or spaemech, inspired by the divine. Not divine himself.” 

“I’ve been a doctor all my adult life,” Ratchet said solemnly, helping Prowl tie the uncomfortable, itchy, mask over his face. “And that mech is completely untouched by the ailments of mortals. There’s no way he grew up in the Rust Sea. There’s no way he grew up on Cybertron. He _must_ be an angel.” 

The doctor sighed, his shoulders slumping in sorrow. “Which makes this all the more tragic. Come on.” He brushed aside the sheet and let them into the room proper.

Prowl’s first impression of the mech was not… angelic. He was a mech. A clean and shiny one beneath the rust-pox, with paint that would be as vibrant as any noble’s under other circumstances, but still just a mortal. Weak and frail with the disease. 

“He’s told me so much,” Ratchet whispered reverently, walking around to the opposite side of the bed and touching the covered form gently. “I wish it weren’t all just delirious raving. He knows how to eliminate the plague, but the fever keeps him from elaborating and telling me the process.” 

“A bold claim,” Prowl said skeptically. “Wake him up.”

Ratchet gave him a dirty look. “I’ll see if he can wake, a little, but be patient. He’s dying.” 

Itching and uncomfortable in the mask, Prowl waited impatiently while Ratchet coaxed his patient awake. Eventually, a dim blue light illuminated the mech’s visor and he looked around the room like he didn’t recognize it. “You th’lawyer?”

“He’s been asking for a lawyer to help him write his will,” Ratchet explained when Prowl looked up at him sharply. “We haven’t been able to find one who’ll actually come. The town barrister thinks he’s a heretic. Jazz?” The sick mech turned very slowly back to Ratchet. “This is Clan Lord Prowl. He’s here to speak with you.” 

“Can’t be,” Jazz murmured weakly. “Lor’Prowl’s been dead fer five-hundred years.”

Prowl’s doors went up in alarm under his cloak. “How was he killed?” 

“Dunno. Poison prolly,” the mech muttered, then coughed. When he continued, Prowl had to lean forward, putting his hands on the bed so he could put his audio right next to the mech’s mouth. He listened intently to the wheezing whispers. “Th’sept-lords hated ‘im. Sparkless bastard. There’s a stageplay. Bloody, sparkless, Prowl… Any’a’em would’ve made a better clan lord. Only reason ‘e lasted so long is ‘cuz they couldn’t settle on one’a’em to replace ‘im.”

“Who replaced him?” Prowl whispered back. Who had united the sept-lords against him?

“S’just a legacy of ghosts,” the prophet (angel?) breathed out weakly, then began to sing. _”They tell of tales and heroes gone; Wars lost and battles won. They yearn to see the sun again…”_

Prowl turned violently away in disgust. Feverish ravings indeed!

Jazz continued to sing softly and Ratchet watched him suspiciously. “I think I’m done here,” Prowl announced.

He stormed out of the sickroom, ripping the ridiculous mask from his face and already settling into a deep, black mood. 

“My lord?” Bluestreak inquired mildly, bringing Prowl up short. “What did he say?”

Prowl contemplated his somehow-cousin. Was it him? Would Bluestreak or some progeny of his be the one to poison Prowl? “Nothing of consequence,” he replied. “Just the ravings of a sick mech.”

“Nothing… divine?” Skids sounded disappointed. Why? Was the church also against him in this?

“No,” he said firmly. “The mech is not a prophet.” _Liar, liar…_

“And the punishment for false prophecy…” Skids started, pulling one of the monastery’s rare texts from his robes to consult.

“Let him die of the pox,” Prowl commanded, interrupting. The punishment for false prophecy was death. Surely if Primus did not see fit to spare his soothsayers from the disease, then Prowl could not be faulted in the Allspark for his death. “Then…” 

His retainers took in a collective breath, waiting. Prowl looked over at Bluestreak and saw only a traitor who had heard the prophet’s words before fever had taken his sense. What had Jazz said to him? Had he whispered of Prowl’s murder to him? Had they planned it out? 

What else had the prophet said to his followers?

“Then burn the frame as a heretic and have every mech who listened to his words executed,” Prowl finished. Of course, Bluestreak would escape justice for now. Not even the church would dare summarily execute a sept-lord. He would have to be assassinated quietly. And quickly.

“Yes, my lord.”

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: If you were born after 1972 in the United States you were _not_ vaccinated against smallpox unless you’re at “high risk” of infection, aka if you’re a scientist working with the remaining virus or other special circumstance. I can’t speak for elsewhere, precisely, but I imagine vaccination tapered off everywhere before or around 1980 when it was declared completely eradicated. Think about _that_ next time you’re writing/reading about some modern waif being swept off her feet by an oddly not-misogynistic medieval-ish lord.


	4. One Must Have Sunshine (Bender AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wars are over, and the newest Avatar wants to be a healer, not a warrior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I might be the only person in existence who hasn’t seen _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ , so bear with me as I fumble my way through this concept.

“I told Optimus: I don’t want to learn fire-bending,” Jazz complained as he trotted to keep up with his current teacher. He didn’t see the mech roll his optics, but he could imagine he had. Jazz had seen enough of his teachers do so. 

“So you’ve said,” Prowl responded evenly. Moonlight glinted off his armor, turning what Jazz knew to be rather plain black and white plating into shades of dark and light blue. “Right to the dragon’s face, even.” 

Jazz made a face at the memory. He’d said it _politely_ at least. He knew better than to mouth off to such a powerful and reclusive spirit. He understood the honor it had been to be offered training from one of the fire dragons, the very creatures mechs had learned firebending from originally, but he just… couldn’t. 

He’d been as surprised as everyone else watching when the dragon didn’t lose his temper and try to incinerate him. Instead the dragon had called Prowl from the crowd and put the young avatar’s firebending training in the veteran warrior’s hands. 

“I dunno why he thought _you_ could convince me,” Jazz continued complaining. It was hot out here, and his feet hurt. He wanted to fly, float on the winds, soar above the dead crystal trees and leave this place behind. The wind could sweep the ash and the dust and the death from this land… But when he’d tried, Prowl had summoned lightning from the clear night sky and struck at him, close enough to scorch paint and send him crashing back down to the ground. Jazz wasn’t dumb; if he knew how to firebend, he might have been able to redirect the lightning and escape, but that would require actually _learning_ to firebend and he. Didn’t. Want. To.

So he trudged through the ash, kicking up petulant flurries as he walked, staining his feet and legs to the knees. 

“You’re a warrior,” Jazz whined, waving his hand at Prowl’s doorwinged back in demonstration. “All firebenders are warriors, weapons, but the War is over and I don’t want to destroy things.”

Prowl made a noise that could have been a hum of agreement or a scoff of derision. 

“Just look at this place!” Jazz twirled around, taking in the devastation. “All of these beautiful crystals, the forests and the fields, destroyed by fire!”

“Is that what you think this place is?” Prowl asked mildly, seemingly unaffected by his companion’s tantrum. “A battlefield?” 

_”Yes!”_

Jazz waited for a reprimand, for some reaction, but Prowl only tilted his doorwings upward in a silent encouragement to continue. Jazz wasn’t sure he trusted it. He _had_ paid attention to the history of the War and he knew Prowl was a tactitican known for luring the enemy into traps, and that apparently, somehow, had continued into the peace negotiations, but Jazz wasn’t sure how a talking-trap could be laid like that. Like… what was going to happen? Was Prowl going to hit him for saying the wrong thing? Jazz almost laughed at the thought. The avatar was the connection between the mortal realm and the spirit realm! Like, maybe during the war some really bad people had tried to hit his predecessor, but now. Who would dare?

So as Prowl let the silence drag on, Jazz gave in and kept talking. “Look at it! It’s a blasted wasteland! This place would have been beautiful once, full of growth and life. Fire destroys everything!”

“Everything?” Prowl finally spoke. “Then what’s that?” He pointed. 

Jazz blinked, looking around again, searching for what Prowl was referring to. “Huh?” 

“Use your optics, youngling.”

Jazz bristled, but looked closer. A long, thin crystal jutted up from between two fallen ones. Delicate and fragile and so very obviously new, it was the first sign of life Jazz had seen in this blasted, ash choked land. 

It was very pretty but Jazz scoffed. “Big deal. It’s growing back.” 

Prowl raked Jazz with a scathing, disdainful look. “Cindervines need sunlight,” he explained mildly. “Any shade kills them. They can’t grow in the forest.” Prowl looked around, moved through a kata, and Jazz flinched before he realized that the fire wasn’t being summoned as a weapon. It crawled along the scorched ground, through the air, creating heat shimmers and smoke shaped into an illusion of trees and vines. Sparks drifted through the foliage like fireflies, and Jazz’s jaw dropped open when he even saw the bright, blue light of a cy-buck’s optics in the smoky gloom before the phantom creature sprang away. 

“Wow…”

“I remember the forest,” Prowl said, and Jazz looked back at him. His teacher was panting, his cables strained with effort. It was a beautiful thing, the most impressive thing Jazz had ever seen be done with fire, but it was obviously very difficult. “Thick with vines that blocked the sun and made the water and air stagnant. It was beautiful, but dying long before the fire.”

Prowl’s fists clenched and the whole illusionary forest went up into clean flame. “This was no battle site, youngling, but a natural wildfire.” He let the fires die away, swirling the last sparks around the cindervine before it all faded. “Cindervines need sunlight, so their seed crystals lay dormant, sometimes for centuries, waiting for the forest to be cleared away by fire. They need the fire, youngling.” 

“It’s still destroying things,” Jazz protested, but it wasn’t as strong or sure as it had been earlier. The waterbenders had taught him to summon images in the water, crafting reflections. And he could make rock-creatures move around. But Prowl had done something different. 

“Is it? Is that all it is?” Prowl stepped forward to gently turn Jazz to look at the horizon. His plating was feverish. Jazz could feel him like he was burning up from the inside. 

He opened his mouth to say something about it, maybe to offer to summon some ice to help cool him down, but then first rays of the sun burst over the ashy wasteland, bathing everything it touched in shades of fiery red. Rocks and ash were turned to hot coals stretching from one edge of the sky to the other. The broken crystals glittered like they were still on fire. And the cindervine glowed like a spirit of flame.

No… it _was_ a spirit of flame, but not one like any spirit Jazz had seen before. Flame spirits were like the dragons, or maybe like phoenixes: even when they were tiny they were big, flashy, and hungry. Maybe they were wise too. 

This one was tiny, no larger than a large insect, and even from here Jazz could feel its patience. He started to speak to it, but it ignored him, spreading it’s cindervine-shaped winges to catch more of the precious sunlight that gave it life…

“Oh.” 

“Cindervines aren’t the only things that need sunlight,” Prowl said gently. Jazz blinked and realized he was crying. He wasn’t sure why. This wasn’t a sick spirit. It was a happy one, doing exactly what was in its nature, in harmony. 

He blinked away the tears. His plating was warming too in the sun, and now Prowl’s no longer felt feverish. Light and fire and life… “We all do.” 

Prowl knelt down in the ash, guiding Jazz to sit with him. “I can teach you to use fire to heal,” he promised. “Now, open your hands and cup them together and breathe…”

.

.

.


	5. Peace On Earth (Bed Sharing AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been… a day for the crew of the _Ark._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this an AU, or just a "what if"?

It had been an eventful… day? Was that the right word? Everything had happened so fast that even Prowl’s processor was having trouble keeping up. He understood, yes, that he and everyone else had spent vorns and vorns in stasis, but from his perspective the final evacuation of Cybertron on the Ark, the Nemesis’ attack, the crash, then waking up to find the planet they were on inhabited, making friends, thwarting the Decepticons escape, and all the rest had happened in a single stretch of unbroken time. He wasn’t the only one reeling. 

The Ark, as a refugee ship more than a warship, had only a handful of officers’ quarters near the bridge. The rest of the barracks were deeper in the ship. Prowl knew that assessing them and ensuring that everyone had _someplace_ to recharge was a priority, but it was a priority that Prowl just couldn’t handle right now. He’d simply given everyone to double up for the night if they needed to, and that any conflicts tonight over sleeping quarters would result in both parties being dropped in the (salty, corrosive) ocean over the Decepticon base to fend for themselves. Prowl’s, admittedly fuzzy, logic was that either the offenders would learn to work together and forge themselves into an unparalleled team and the problem would be solved, or the seekers would use them as target practice and the problem would be moot. Win-win.

A win-win he knew he’d regret in the morning, but right now Prowl just couldn’t deal with the infighting. No one could. He’d deal with any conflicts that resulted from his “sort yourselves out or else” command later.

Fortunately, it seemed that everyone else was as tired as he was and nothing had come up yet. 

The lights in the officer block flickered then died. Prowl barely noticed. A glance had told him that there was very little debris strewn across his floor; not enough of his things had survived to clutter up the closet-sized room. He did notice that his door was ajar, and he spent probably too much time fussing with it to get it closed before giving up and turning toward the bed. 

A bolt of alarm shot through him when what he thought was a bit of debris that had fallen on the recharge berth moved. A blue visor blinked on and Prowl relaxed minutely. 

Of course he knew Jazz. Jazz was Prime’s designated second in command. But he’d only rarely worked with the mech before the final evacuation and take off. 

“Sorry, mech,” Jazz’s voice was scratchy with interrupted sleep. “Power’s completely out across the hall. After your little threat, I didn’t think you’d mind.” 

Prowl forced his combat protocols to disengage. “No,” he lied. “I do not.” 

He could deal with it, with everything, tomorrow. He unspooled his cord to plug into the recharge berth and crawled in next to Jazz.

.

.

.


	6. Zen And The Art of Failing As An Assassin (Enemies AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite everything, Jazz underestimated his target.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decepticon!Jazz, assasination attempts, Prowl is a bastard. Prequel.
> 
> Sorry it's kind of short. Migraine. Maybe I’ll come back to it later.

Data drone. Jazz knew better than to take a briefing entirely to spark. Soundwave was always accurate but sometimes he lied. Jazz seethed at the thought. Soundwave _lied._ Jazz hated him and the feeling was assuredly mutual. He wouldn’t put it past the mech to arrange for a suicide mission. 

This time, however, it looked like the briefing Jazz had received was accurate. There was no sign Mirage -- the head of Autobot Spec Ops -- was on base right now. That might not mean much, given the mech was rumored to be able to go invisible, but Jazz had seen no sign of him at all. The agents that were on base Jazz had spotted were taking their orders from a couple of different aides, not the head of Ops himself. 

The report had also described Jazz’s target as a data drone. Jazz hadn’t trusted it. How did a _data drone_ achieve such a high rank? 

But as he spent cycles and cycles observing Prowl, both from the anonymous safety of the base’s air ducts and from the slightly less anonymous position of newly arrived recruit, Jazz had seen nothing that suggested Prowl was competent in anything other than datawork. 

Jazz scoffed silently. The mech wouldn’t have lasted a nanoklik in the Decepticons. Of course the Decepticons had “data drones” too -- Soundwave was one of them -- but they were masters of vast spy networks, capable blackmailers, and vicious fighters in their own right.

When he’d encountered Prowl in the hall in his Marshal cover, just getting close enough to observe, the mech always smiled slightly then turned his attention back to his datapad, distracted and unwary. Easy prey. 

Too easy. 

That was the crux of why Jazz kept hesitating: it was too easy. Soundwave _never_ gave him easy jobs!

But he was also approaching Soundwave’s deadline, and he’d been very clear that Jazz was to kill the tactician before the attack. Feeling both confident and stressed, Jazz moved into position. 

There were no shadows inside the Autobot base. There were precious few camera blind spots. Jazz had to wait at an intersection for Prowl to pass. 

The tactician’s bodyguard was doing his job, but Jazz had been prepared for that. As the mech turned to look down the hall, Jazz grabbed him by the bumper and slammed an energon knife into his neck. He dropped the limp frame and pounced on Prowl.

He’d expected some panicked scrambling as the tactician realized he was in danger and tried to run. 

What he got was a smooth sidestep, expertly twirled around off balance, then jabbed with a stun baton. Jazz shunted the energy away, but that only kept him _conscious_ when the mech threw him into the wall.

Jazz slumped to the ground with a groan. 

Prowl looked down at him, expression as coolly detached as when examining his datapads. “I can’t say I didn’t expect that.” 

Jazz spat. He expected rage, anger, to be killed. He’d already failed. One way or another he was going to die. 

The mech just smiled. “Yes, you’ll do nicely.” He jabbed the stun baton into Jazz’s chest again. The last thing Jazz heard as his vision go dark was his own scream. 

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in [Zen And The Art Of Being A Scheming Son Of A Bitch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19008352)


	7. At Midnight the Dream Ends (Royalty AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I probably should have saved this for Fairytale but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ .

Prince Prowl. Prince Prowl the Charming, or so his councillors were pushing for his epithet to be. Right now he did not exactly feel very charming. He felt tongue tied and clumsy while his dance partner twirled gracefully across the dance floor, stepping lightly in his arms. 

“They’re all jealous,” his mysterious dance partner said, leaning in conspiratorially.

“I am a mech to be jealous of this night,” Prowl whispered, brushing the veil from his partner’s cheeks. 

The gorgeous mech laughed lightly. “They’re not jealous for my company, silly. They’re jealous because it’s not them you’re twitterpated over.” 

“I’m not twitterpated.” 

“You’re not?” the mech laughed again when Prowl shook his head vehemently. “Good. I’ve always thought that it must be a dreadful state. Weak and fluttery and unable to focus… it’s not the sort of state in which to choose a forever-partner.” 

“I’d always thought so,” Prowl responded softly. He’d had this argument with the king just this morning when Optimus had insisted on his attending this ball. It was little more than an excuse for every eligible mech and femme to come and show off and try to catch his optics, when Prowl would have much rather spent the time going over their legal files and having them fill out compatibility forms, instead of “falling in love” at this useless meet and greet. 

Now, he kind of wanted to just spend forever gazing watching this stranger move, each step as graceful and delicate as a crystal moth in flight. Was this love?

“Perhaps,” Prowl continued, “we should talk about your qualifications for life-partner status… other than love, of course.”

The stranger laughed again. “Oh, you don’t want me.” 

_Yes, I do._

“Come now,” Prowl insisted, guiding his dance partner from the floor and towards the fresher air of the garden. “How can we be sure of that if I don’t give you my survey?”

“Ooh, a survey?” A sparkling smile danced across the beautiful mech’s face. “Are we going to your office to pick up official forms?” he teased.

“My office is locked.” Prowl let his doors droop in only partially-simulated disappointment. The king had made a show of locking it before dragging Prowl to the detailers to get prettied up for the ball. “We’ll just have to make do with a verbal survey… in the garden?” 

Behind the visor, Prowl just barely saw the mech’s optics sparkle in mirth. And beneath that mirth, hesitation. “The garden? Isn’t that too… romantic?”

“No.” Prowl touched the crystalline veil hanging around the mech’s helm, “I think it’s just romantic enough.” 

The hesitation melted and the stranger allowed himself to be led out into the night with a precious, sparkling smile.  
Now that they were out here, though, Prowl wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t really believe his partner really wanted to take his compatibility survey. King Optimus had been quite clear that nothing would drive off a potential mate faster. At the same time, though, someone who agreed that love clouded one’s judgement likely didn’t want the over the top, flowery declarations Consort Elita had made him practice. 

“Ooh, look at that!” 

Prowl looked at the crystal that had caught the stranger’s attention. “That’s a living corundum,” he offered. “A chromium-metabolizing variety.” He plucked one of the delicate crystals from its branch, silencing a squawk of protest from the mech, and used it to pin the veil back away from his face. 

“It’s going to die now,” he said, but his expression was charmed rather than saddened. 

“When you get home,” Prowl leaned in to confide, “soak it in a mild energon solution and it will root. Then, in a century, you will have a crystal tree as glorious as this one.”

“Oh! Thank you. I will treasure it!” This time the smile wasn’t amused or knowing, but amazed and truly joyous and Prowl felt like the ground had fallen from beneath his feet at the sight of it. 

“May I see your optics?” Prowl blurted out, awkwardly.

The smile dimmed. “My lord… Prince--”

“Prowl,” the prince interrupted. “Just Prowl.” 

“Prince Prowl,” the stranger said firmly, “We’re both infatuated and… I really am not who you should be with.”

“I didn’t ask to be with you forever,” Prowl murmured, though he truly wanted that. “I just want to see your optics.”

The mech’s mouth turned down in an uncertain frown. 

“I will not press,” Prowl said quickly. “And if infatuation is not a reason to choose a future-Consort that is one thing, but infatuation is a reason to want to _look_ upon the source of that infatuation, is it not?”

“Oh,” the stranger gave a watery laugh. “You are charming.” 

“The court seems to think so.”

The mech stayed quiet after that, leading them to the next crystal blossom, this one a pure, clear variety of quartz. Silently, Prowl added a second cluster to the first decorating the mech’s helm.

“Yes.” He looked into Prowl’s optics, the visor shielding his own. “This is a bad idea for us both but… you may. See. My optics,” he finished awkwardly. 

Spark spinning quickly in it’s crystal, Prowl refrained from letting out an undignified sound of elation. He pulled the mech into his arms and pressed a kiss to his nose. “Thank you. It is a sight I will treasure forever.” 

“Just do it.” The stranger tried to look away, only to be caught and guided back up. 

“Shh,” Prowl kissed his nose again. “I’m sure they are lovely.” He carefully removed the visor shielding them from view. Where were the fireworks? Prowl was sure that there were always fireworks in the stories… 

_**Bong! Bong!** _

There it was. Not the fireworks, but the midnight bell was as appropriately dramatic. He saw the bright blue slivers of those optics, nearly revealed.

_**Bong!** _

“Oh!” The mech suddenly turned away, pulling himself out of Prowl’s embrace. “I have to go!”

“Wait! No!” 

“Sorry!”

And the mech ran off, through the garden, leaving Prowl cold, holding nothing but a blue crystal visor instead of the warm mech who’d wormed his way into his spark. 

.

.

.


	8. Table Gossip (Secret Dating AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl and Jazz’s relationship is _totally secret._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short. D&D killed my writing time today.

“Inspection cancelled again?” Bumblebee asked as Smokescreen trudged into the nearly empty commissary. 

Smokescreen didn’t answer right away. Instead he went and drew himself a cube of plain midgrade, added way too much iron oxide powder to it, then trudged over to the table Bumblebee was occupying where he somehow managed to flop down on the bench without falling all the way to the floor. It was a talent Bumblebee admired and wanted to emulate. Only a few bots could _flop_ down onto the commissary benches. Smokescreen, Sideswipe, Jazz, Wheeljack. 

It defied physics and Bumblebee wasn’t surprised Wheeljack could do it but how the others had picked up the skill baffled him. 

“No,” Smokescreen finally groaned, answering the question. “I wish it had been, though. Prowl triple-timed us through everything and still somehow managed to make us check everything three or four times and sign off on it in triplicate.”

“Ouch.”

“Right!?!” Smokescreen leaned forward and rested his head on the table. “I wish he’d just--” 

“To be fair,” Mirage said, shimmering into visibility; Bumblebee saw Smokescreen twitch violently in surprise, but he didn’t bolt upright and try to shoot him. Trust or exhaustion, and right now Bee would bet on exhaustion. “Even if they revealed their relationship, he’d still triple time inspections when Jazz returned from a mission. He would just admit why he was doing it.” 

“Not helping.”

.

.

.


	9. It’s a Crush (University AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl takes the best notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't like my time in university. It was not fun or romantic. It was stressful and generally bad. So it's not fun to revisit or romanticize that in fanfiction. With that in mind, here's my University AU prompt response.

“Hey! Prowl!”

Prowl’s doors went up and he turned toward the speaker. It wasn’t someone he recognized and he figured he must be calling out to someone else with the same name.

“No. Yes! I’m talking to you! Don’t leave!” The mech was pushing his way through the crowded quad. Curiously, Prowl stopped and waited. He didn’t recognize him, so how hand he gotten his name?

“Hi!” The mech panted when he’d finally come to a stop within speaking distance. “Sorry. I’m Jazz. My friend Mirage said you take Professor Perceptor’s Astrobiology one-oh-one class on Moonday and Wealday with him? I’m in the Toilday-Oathday sessions. Mirage says you take the best notes in class!” he -- Jazz apparently -- spilled the words out in a rush, as though worried that if he didn’t get it all out fast enough, Prowl would get fed up and leave. 

Which he wouldn’t. He had a whole four minutes before he needed to be in his next class. “That’s all true,” Prowl confirmed. That explanation sounded like a prelude to making some sort of request, probably to see his notes. 

Jazz flashed a smile, and Prowl felt his knees go a little weak at it. He kept his impassive expression, though. If he let on to every charming mech who smiled at him just how it affected him, he’d always be doing favors for the jocks when he really just wanted to be left alone. “I have to go back to Polyhex next week for a few days. Would you mind forwarding me a copy of your notes so I don’t fall behind?”

Prowl considered that. It was a favor. It was specifically the sort of favor Prowl generally didn’t grant. It was the top of a slippery slope that could lead to other students not attending their classes at all, while Prowl just took notes and helped them study. But students didn’t usually take a week off school in the middle of the semester to go back home unless it was an emergency of some sort either. Given the limited duration of the visit, statistically it was likely either a relative’s bonding ceremony or a funeral, rather than a dying family member. Polyhex _did_ still practice arranged bondings in the most othodox sections and if they skipped the introduction phase, that could be accomplished in a week. But... He almost asked why Jazz was going back to--

“Please?” Jazz pleaded when Prowl had apparently been silent too long. “It’s just the two days and I promise I’ll make it up to you somehow…”

“Just two days?” Prowl confirmed, setting aside his curiosity. He didn’t know Jazz well enough to pry into his life like that. He didn’t know Jazz at all. 

“Two days. Promise. Cross my spark and hope to--”

“Don’t finish that sentence.” Prowl sighed. Yes, he was aware it was an outdated superstition, but he was Praxan and he couldn’t hear the phrase without flinching. “I’m going to need your email address.”

“Right! Thanks!” Jazz scrambled to pull out a bit of flimsy and a pen… “Here. Don’t worry about that right there. It looks like it’s misspelled but it’s not. Or, well. It is, but it’s a misspelling from ten years ago when I signed up for the email service…”

“Of course.” Prowl accepted the flimsy. “I’ll send you a test email tonight so you’ll have mine. Right now I need to get to class.”

“Right! Don’t let me keep you!” 

The last thing Prowl saw of Jazz as he turned away was that damnably charming smile. 

.

.

.


	10. All The Ways I Love You (Reverse Crush AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When in doubt, spy on him from the air vent. (TFP AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You probably don’t need to know anything about TFP specifically except that there is a very small number of them in a very small base, instead of a lot of them living in a big crashed ship like in G1. Part of the AU is that Jazz and Prowl weren’t characters used in that show…

Jazz had only arrived a week ago, crashing his ship into the ocean and getting fished out of the salt water by coast guard helicopter. 

Prowl had arrived in an escape pod just three days ago, broadcasting stolen Decepticon ship codes, and landing with only a smidge more dignity somewhere in Canada after first clipping the moon, then skipping off Earth’s atmosphere, and almost hitting the moon again before swan-diving into the Earth. 

“Would you either take him for a spin cycle or let him down gently,” Ratchet groused one day as Jazz sidled up to him and Prime to debrief the latest non and lightly classified Decepticon developments with them. There wasn’t a lot that was classified on Earth anymore. That had taken some adjustment, though it made sense. They were just too small of a group. 

“Huh?” Jazz answered Ratchet intelligently. He looked over to Prime to see if he knew what was going on.

“Ratchet is right,” Optimus, née Orion and Jazz’s longtime friend, said solemnly. “You’re usually not quite this obvious, my friend.” 

“Dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Prowl!” Ratchet waved his hand toward the opening of the base, currently open save for the holographic seeming that the rock face was intact. Prowl had just left to go on a patrol. “It’s pathetic.”

Jazz looked back and forth between his two companions in confusion. _He_ hadn’t noticed anything “pathetic” about Prowl. He was, so far as Jazz could tell, the same as he had always been.

“If you’re worried about the chain of command,” Optimus rumbled softly, “know that our situation has changed. There isn’t enough of us left in one place for those rules to be helpful any longer.” 

Jazz furrowed his brow. Considered what they were talking around. He wasn’t dumb. “You saying Prowl has a crush?”

“For almost a millenia!”

“Ratchet.” 

“Harumph.” 

Why hadn’t he noticed before? That was the question on Jazz’s mind. He was usually so good at ferreting out that sort of thing. He knew every relationship, fragbuddy, and crush in the army!

Except this one, apparently.

Well Jazz could not stand for that.

The next week of interaction (and Decepticon attacks) didn’t yield any hints that Prowl had some sort of infatuation. He didn’t show any of the usual signs! Prowl didn’t fidget, ever that Jazz saw. He didn’t try and touch Jazz. He didn’t go out of his way to stand closer to him than to anyone else. He didn’t stumble over his words.

Spying on Prowl from the air vents was one of his more challenging self-assigned tasks. Damn Praxans. 

Slowly, though, he observed how Prowl acted not just when Jazz was there, but also how he acted when he wasn’t. 

He was _brusque_ with the others, almost to the point of being rude. Jazz almost fell out of the air vent he was hiding in the first time Prowl simply brushed off what Optimus was saying. Prowl _never_ did that to him!

After that, Jazz started to see it, if only a little. Prowl sought him out to ask his opinion. He hadn’t noticed because Prowl always seemed to have the others’ opinions too, but what he hadn’t realized is that he didn’t solicit them for those opinions the way he did Jazz. And he never told Jazz to leave him alone. He engaged in the conversation, sometimes for several minutes, when his habit was to tune out the others after the salient information had been extracted. 

After a while, Jazz started thinking maybe he _shouldn’t_ just give Prowl a gentle let down. 

.

.

.


	11. Love Conquers All (Star-Crossed Lovers AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m sure _this_ isn’t cliche at all… #sarcasm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It also kind of got away from me. Past-Decepticon!Prowl.

“No _way!_ Prowl wasn’t a ‘Con!” 

Prowl’s door twitched and he turned, looking at the knot of new recruits, plus Bumblebee and Jazz in the corner of the commissary. It was Bumblebee who had called out and now the little yellow ‘bot was doing his best to hide behind his various conversational companions. The other -- those who knew who he was -- were shooting him nervous looks. 

Except Jazz. Jazz was, now and always, the exception. To everything. He was looking over at Prowl with a smug, triumphant expression. 

Prowl sighed. If Jazz wanted him over there… 

“He sure was,” the saboteur had turned back to his little posse by the time Prowl chose a chair nearby, close enough to listen but not close enough to appear to be listening. He sipped his cube and reviewed the new routes through the Sonic Canyons. So far they had done well, but some of the convoys had dealt with snipers along the routes, and so there were a couple of points that needed to be reinforced, and they would need more sensor stations and drone sweeps through that area.

“But he’s...” out of the corner of his visual feed, Prowl noted the speaker. One of the new recruits. “I don’t know. Command staff!”

“Also true,” Jazz crowed, spinning in his chair. “It’s been a while since he’s worn purple. Even defectors get off probation _sometime.”_

Of course, Prowl had been a mech of some rank so his probation had been longer than most. However, the circumstances had also warranted some exceptions to the usually tight security that surrounded defectors. Including one, very large, exception. 

“It was a dark and _stormy_ night when me and Prowl met.” Lie. It had been a bright, pleasant day that had faded into a cloudy, but warm, evening, but Prowl had long since given up on correcting Jazz about the minor, irrelevant details. He understood propaganda, probably better than most Autobots, and Jazz was this faction’s prime propaganda-crafter. If making the story more “dramatic” made it better for Jazz’s purposes, then Prowl -- frankly -- did not want to interfere. 

“I was,” Jazz continued, “disguised as a Decepticon myself. “Not a high-ranking one. Just one of the civilians locked up behind those iron walls around Kaon, listening to Megatron’s voice on the loudspeaker, reciting those pedantic ‘updates’ about the glorious Cause and their progress destroying the,” he lowered his voice to a gravelly growl, imitating Megatron’s, “Autobot insurgents.” 

Prowl scoffed. A blunt instrument of propaganda, and the least effective off all the ways Megatron kept his civilians in line. 

“I was there,” Jazz returned his voice to his own, more natural-sounding, easygoing tones, “to see what I’d need to do to get that populace to revolt, you see. So I was listening pretty damn close to those broadcasts. And what I learned was that Megatron’s rubbish at convincing anyone to do anything, ‘cept at the business end of his canon, but whoever wrote his speeches was better. And the mech who controlled Kaon’s media was a freakin’ genius.” 

Now all of Jazz’s audience were rapt. 

“So there I am, watching newscasts and digging into the plot points of educational cartoons and trying to figure out how the heck I’m going to worm my way inside this and get these people to see the light… and I’m made. So I run out into the street, soldiers right on my back tires, and I turn a corner and before I can do more than catch my balance, I get yanked into someone’s basement.

“I turn, ready to fight, and find this mousy-looking mech. He shooshes me and tells me to go further in. Then he answers the soldiers at the door and convinces them to go away.”

Prowl saw several mechs glance in his direction again, and he feigned unawareness. He didn’t like the descriptor “mousey”, but it was Jazz’s story, and he didn’t mind being perceived as less physically dangerous than he was. 

“So I go further in and I find myself on a soundstage. I hadn’t been pulled into a hideout of some Autobot sympathizer, but yanked into the mastermind behind those fragging cartoons himself! When he came back, it was obvious he didn’t know I was an Autobot. He’d thought I was just some civilian caught up in something and he did not approve. He offered to let me stay, as long as I worked.”

Jazz rubbed his hands together. “So this was my chance to get inside the Decepticons’ propaganda machine and see if I could do some good.” 

“Did you seduce him?” 

“Sure did!” Prowl felt Jazz’s gaze on him and he looked up. He was holding his hand out, beckoning him to come sit down with all of them. Prowl stood and silently took the hand and the invitation. “But he seduced me first.” 

.

.

.


	12. (Childhood Friends AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They meet again. 100 word drabble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No chapter title today b/c I’m _ti~red_ for some reason.

“I’ll introduce you to our second in command,” Prime continued as their tour took them to the officers’ offices. Prowl stopped as someone stepped into the corridor. “Jazz?” Optimus called. “I’d like you to meet our new tactical advisor… ”

“We’ve met,” Prowl said, not quietly enough. 

Jazz smiled. “Heya Prowl.”

You’ll--” Prime started.

“Which one is my office?” Prowl interrupted, dismissing the topic. 

“Is this going to be a problem?” Prime asked. 

One bristled with the unsaid words of an unspoken history trying to burst out from between the seams of his armor. The other studiously, pointedly, ignoring him. 

“No.”

.

.

.


	13. A Bloom Chosen Just For You (Flower Shop AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When working at a flower shop, you see a lot of romances blossom and die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prowl/Tumbler, Jazz/Prowl. Pining.

“Greetings!” Blaster sang out when he heard the bell he’d installed on the front door ring cheerily. “I’ll be with you in a moment!”

“That is not a problem,” was the polite, and some would say overly formal, answer. It was such a nice, pleasant voice. Conventional, not melodic, maybe even a little prim, but still very nice to listen to. Blaster hummed the melody of the mech’s words _That-is-not-a-prob-lem~♪_ and decided it wasn’t a very interesting bit of music, which meant it wasn’t to his usual taste in voices, but there was still something about it he really liked. A good reading voice, maybe, instead of a good singing one.

Assured that his customer wasn’t going to take off in a huff, Blaster took the time to finish arranging the display of zinnia crystals into vibrant fireworks among the duller, but no less dramatic copperferns.

Then he turned to his new, decorous customer.

Blaster’s visual impressions of the officer mirrored his initial ones from his voice. Praxan or Praxan influenced design, which was a bit unusual here in Iacon, he held himself stiffly upright, angling his armor into neat, formal lines. Blaster contemplated the lightbar on the mech’s back, and the sleek, elegant lines and decided he probably had a swift, powerful alt mode, and the grille bar on his front bumper indicated he could ram through fences, or try and spin out other cars during pursuits. Definitely not a racer.

He drifted over to the display of live crystals to see what his customer was looking at. The bulbus living malachite glinted back, plain but polished.

“Those have pretty low light requirements,” Blaster said, pitching his voice into an enticing note. “They’re from Polyhex, where they grow in the entrance caves. So they get some surface-light, but not much. They’re pretty great for all sorts of indoor locations!”

The officer turned, and Blaster took in the austere expression. It wasn’t his habit to consider anyone unlovable -- he’d seen too many unlikely pairs come together over just the right gesture -- but someone was going to have a difficult time coaxing him to express emotions. Blaster smiled easily. He was probably lonely.

“Thank you for the information,” the officer said, standoffish. “However, I am looking for a romantic gesture suitable for an anniversary.”

Oooh! Blaster reordered his thoughts. “Something live?”

“I am given to understand that dying flora is considered more romantic.” There was a very slight curl of distaste to the words, like he didn’t approve, though it took Blaster humming the words to himself in his head to hear it in the mech’s inflection.

“Conventionally,” Blaster acknowledged. “Want me to start putting together a bouquet?”

“Please.” Doorwings twitched; Blaster chose to read it as relief.

“Traditionally,” Blaster explained, half talking to himself and half talking to his customer who obviously struggled with “standard” gestures of affection, “cut crystal flowers are considered romantic because they’ll die without being of any use. Like,” he paused to pick up one of the black plastic buckets that usually sat underneath the displays to gather the flowers into before wrapping them in an appropriate flimsy and ribbon, “getting someone a live crystal was giving them a useful gift. Frugal. But getting them something that wasn’t going to be useful was extravagant. You’re saying ‘you’re worth the money’.”

“I see.” The officer wandered over to observe Blaster as he picked out the crystal flowers.

“So tell me a bit about what you want this gift to say to…”

“Tumbler.”

“To Tumbler?” Blaster noted the name so he wouldn’t have to ask again when he wrote up the card.

Teasing out the exact bouquet this mech wanted and what he wanted to say with it took longer than it did with a lot of customers. The officer was methodical and once he caught on to the fact that Blaster was choosing blooms that actually meant something, he wanted his bouquet to have a meaning as precise as words would have been, fully embracing floriography. He was also awkward and unpracticed with romantic gestures and needed to be coaxed through the entire process.

Looking at the resultant mixture of red (love) and red and white (togetherness) rose crystals, framed by sprays of white hollyhock (ambition) and copperferns (sincerity), Blaster thought the effort was more than worth it.

“Come again!”

Chuckling to himself, Blaster set about adjusting each of the displays he’d pulled from so that they once again looked cohesive. He looked up as the bell chimed again.

This time he was met by a bright smile beneath a distinctly Polyhexian visor. “Hello,” the mech greeted before Blaster could say anything, sidling into the shop and looking around with curiosity. “Sooo… What’d Prowl want?”

Blaster blinked. Prowl?

“Or right. Should clarify… your last customer? The pretty cop? Just left? What’d he… actually he probably wanted something for his partner, should ask what he was looking at? You know, when he wasn’t putting something together for Tumbler. I don’t care about Tumbler. I want to know what Prowl wants.”

This was starting to sound a bit creepy and Blaster stood up to his full height, towering over the much more lightly built car. Being a structure-alt had its advantages. “I don’t give out details about my customers.”

The mech’s nose wrinkled. “Frag. Guess that wasn’t the best impression I could’ve made… My name’s Jazz. Me’n Prowl share a desk at work. I’ve been trying to find something for Prowl for his construction date. It’s in a decacycle and, well, he don’t go shopping for himself, so this is my first chance to do a little scouting.”

Blaster still regarded this newcomer warily.

Jazz sighed and his gaze roamed over the shop again. “Bet it was one of the living crystals, wasn’t it?” he didn’t wait for an answer and went over there to peer closer at the small, neat selection. Blaster didn’t carry a ton of live plants -- he was a flower shop, not a nursery -- but Jazz soon made a noise of frustration. “Not even a hint? Tumbler always forgets Prowl’s construction date, or thinks it’s not important. I know cold constructed mechs don’t, I don’t know, do big celebrations and slag for that, but it’s worth… something. Something Prowl likes.”

Automatically, Blaster hummed Jazz’s words _something-Prowl-likes~♪_ to himself, and though every bit of sense told him this was a bad idea, he could hear the notes of love and longing in Jazz’s expressive, melodic voice. “He was looking at the living malachites, the ones from Polyhex.”

Jazz’s whole demeanor perked up. “Encouragement. Thriving in adversity. Enduring all things, no matter how difficult and painful. Power and loneliness. Protection from danger and threats… Sounds perfect for Prowl!”

Another fan of floriography. Despite himself, Blaster smiled. “You forgot… In Iacon, it can also mean lust and physical attraction.”

He was treated to the amusing sight of Jazz’s embarrassed fidgeting as he tried to deny it.

Jazz bought the malachite for Prowl anyway. It really was the perfect desk crystal.

.

.

.


	14. I Want To Watch You Dance (Social Media AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone’s got a secret.

“Hey Patrons!” Jazz crowed into the Discuss app live chat. “Nice to see you all! It’s songwriting night, so I’m going to go ahead and turn on screen share for anyone who wants to follow along but you don’t need to be watching to chime in. You all know that chat rules but in case you don’t: keep it family friendly and don’t ping me directly. If you’ve got anything to say, my new moderator, black&white’ll relay questions and comments to me. Otherwise I’m just going to talk while I write. So I told you all last time about my trip to Praxus...”

Jazz started to ramble. He liked talking while he wrote. It was soothing, stimulating, and sometimes his patrons came up with new and interesting turns of phrase that he could incorporate into the music. 

He just needed a filter, someone who could pass on only a few questions and comments for him to answer right then. He’d make a post in the server later, based on the mod’s notes about the session, answering even more questions and responding to comments he hadn’t even noticed. 

It went well. He talked about his recent vacation, his continuing (and often disastrous) efforts to learn to cook, his aventures into kitten ownership… 

Later, after the chat room had been closed and everyone had said good night, Jazz stretched and looked over his newest song. It was far from finished, and it’d be months yet before he performed it, but he felt good about it. 

_That went well._ The message from black&white popped up on Jazz’s screen and he smiled. Black&white had been working as a mod for a few days, but this was really his first time managing such a large volume of chat messages at once. He’d done extremely well. 

_Definitely,_ Jazz typed back. _Want a private performance before bed?_

He imagined he could hear the resultant silence as the mod contemplated that. Jazz knew it was an extremely tempting offer, but black&white would have to finally voice chat, or Primus forbid, _video chat_ when so far he (or she) had refused to do anything except by text. It intrigued Jazz. Plenty of people had plenty to hide online, but what was longtime-fan black&white keeping secret?

 _Another time,_ came the response, finally. _Thank you for the offer._

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Magnolia_in_Black_Velvet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet/pseuds/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet) wrote a song for the Cafe AU story. Go read it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898929) and give it some kudos and comment love. ♥


	15. Sparkles and Rainbows (Mythical Creatures AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl is a f***ing unicorn. That’s it. That’s the entire story.

Prowl was feverish. Enspelled. He could sense the mech _(the bait)_ in the forest, calm and humming to himself while the nightmare raged around him in the forest. Prowl would have run, dashed far away from this place, but he had to get to the mech first. The spell, his own nature wouldn’t let him do otherwise.

Around him, he could hear the hunters as they thundered through the glittering forest in their own alt modes. Their dogs bayed at his heels, nipping and biting at his hooves, trying to bring him down. His own steps sent shockwaves through his form, even though each galloped step made only the lightest chime sound, silver against crystal. 

His own breath turned to steam in the cool night air, creating clouds of mist. 

He couldn’t stumble, couldn’t fall. 

He jumped down a short bluff, hoping to at least… the hounds skidded to a stop; one didn’t halt fast enough and tumbled down the cliff, hitting the bottom with a _thud._ Prowl could smell blood, sense the life draining from the dog and into the dark ground and he had to resist the impulse to turn and heal the creature. 

Free for just a moment, he turned toward the clearing where the mech waited.

She gleamed in the moonlight. Prowl could hear the hunters closing in around him. Even without the dogs, they knew he’d come here, that he couldn’t leave without seeing him, touching him… entranced and febrile, he stepped into the clearing. His breath curled around him, hot and fetid and glowing like tendrils of power. He raised his head, let his crystal horn catch the light.

The scene glitched. Fuzzed into static and changed, but before he could see beyond the illusion, it reestablished and the binding spell the hunters the had cast yanked on his spark. Defeated, he lowered his head, horn pointed to the ground, and docilely continued into the clearing, walking to his death. 

He didn’t have the strength to fight the compulsions any longer. 

The hunters closed in. Now Prowl could see them through the trees, surrounding him. He just needed to touch the mech before--

One lifted his gun. 

The scene glitched again, and this time the illusion shattered. Prowl shied and reared. This was no virgin mech, tied like a sacrifice.

Instead the gleaming mage stood tall and proud. 

Prowl tried to run again. This was… But the spells still held him. 

“How dare you!” the mage-mach thundered, and Prowl reared in surprise before he realized he was yelling at the hunters and not the exhausted unicorn. Magic surged and guns and knives all clattered to the ground, glowing red-hot and burning to the touch. “You were going to--” the mage growled himself, then shrieked and the hunters all cringed away from another surge of magic. 

Prowl reared and turned, shrieking himself. The magic snatched at his power and at his plating both, but eventually let him be to focus on the hunters. It swirled around each of them, glittering like crystal and moonlight and anger.

And when it subsided and Prowl could see what the mage had wrought, each hunter had been turned to a small, white, petrorabbit. 

The binding spell fell away, but before Prowl could make good on his escape and run again, the mage had come to him, and looked into his optics. Prowl fell into that gaze, the visor as deep and blue as the sea. This was no virgin mech; his spark was heavy with experience and power and _knowing_ and Prowl’s plating shuddered at the thought that he might try to touch. That touch would burn. 

But the mage didn’t. Instead he grinned wickedly and stepped back. Mist rose around him, and in his place stood a black mirror of Prowl’s own form, from the night-black horn to the flick of a silky, dark tail. Prowl still didn’t want him touching him. He was not pure. 

“Well, Unicorn,” the mage-in-disguise said. “How about some revenge?” He tossed his head and pointed his own spear-sharp horn at the nearest former-hunter. 

Prowl considered. “Yes.”

The rabbits scattered frightfully. 

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow I wrote another myth-AU based on a Heather Alexander song. This one is “The Trap”.


	16. I See You Now (Magic AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s downsides to every power.

Knowing he wouldn’t actually be seen, Jazz waved at one of Red Alert’s cameras. The security director hated how Jazz could literally waltz through his systems without them picking up so much as a glimpse or squeak. The mech’s only solace was that if the Autobots’ second in command were a Decepticon spy (he totally _was_ a spy!... Just not a Decepticon one), then they were all doomed even if the cameras could see him. If Jazz were a plant, they all would have woken up dead a long time ago. 

Red Alert wasn’t satisfied, but there wasn’t anything Jazz could do about that. Even if the system had attention to be grabbed (it didn’t; the cameras were untiring and took in all data equally), Jazz couldn’t dance through the halls, singing at his maximum volume, with a strobe light, and tossing glitter around like it was the Festival of the Five every nanoklik of every cycle. It was impractical, exhausting, and impossible. He would distract such a system from actual threats, and even the most diligent of attention would wander eventually and then… Jazz was gone. 

As it was, the cameras couldn’t pick him up, and thus the mech watching those cameras was just as blind. 

Mechs had attention he could grab, if he tried. When he passed fellow Autobots in the halls, he could say hello and it’d briefly catch their attention. (They couldn’t say hello first.) They’d exchange greetings, even talk, but then they’d pass and move on, look away, and if they looked back Jazz would have to catch their attention again or be content to slip away unnoticed. Unnoticeable. 

Jazz wasn’t invisible; he just… couldn’t be seen. 

After he’d greeted enough mechs that it’d get around to various interested parties that he was back, he stopped going out of his way to be noticed and disappeared. He ghosted toward the halls toward Tactical. 

Here deeper in the base where the doors were all key-code locked and everything required a passcode to access, security was… slightly different. Here the system was capable of brief spikes of attention, but only when he entered his codes. He could have evaded the system entirely using his skill, but he didn’t bother. Jazz could feel the brief spikes of attention from the cameras as they checked that the keycode and the person entering it matched up, recorded his image, only for the system to utterly lose interest once the door was open and he could pass through it freely. As far as mechs and femmes were concerned, there was nothing there to notice, nothing to remark on. Nothing there. 

He let himself into the tactical hub and waited a klik.

“Hello, Jazz,” Prowl said without turning from the flat, silvered glass tabletop in front of him. Slow, delayed, but unprompted. 

“Heya Prowl,” Jazz responded, circling the table. Prowl’s optics were bright and bleached nearly white, blinded from their own light, as he stared down at the reflective surface. 

“You seem cheerful.” It took Prowl a klik to respond, even though Jazz should have now had his attention and he could see and hear him in real time. It meant he was deeper in the threads of the past/future than he’d initially thought. Magic always mixed a little oddly with magic. Jazz’s power obscured all methods of sight, mundane and magical, in the present, but Prowl could see all of the recent past and some of the immediate future in the mirror. 

He was talking to Jazz a klik in the past. It made him seem like he processed things slow. His builders had even at one point scrapped Prowl and sent him to be assessed for an unskilled labor job, but Jazz had never met someone who processed things faster. Prowl just had so much _to_ process.

And if he couldn’t make the jump from first spotting Jazz a klik after he’d walked into the room to looking at him with his optics, it was a sure sign he was processing too much.

“Was. Am,” Jazz whispered, coming in close. He held his hand out to Prowl, pausing only a micron from Prowl’s hand. “Come on, though. Time for good little tacticians to rest.”

Prowl waited a klik then looked up, his optics still white-blind. “Is it?”

“Yeah.”

Prowl considered. Considered more than Jazz could ever know, then moved his hand to bridge the last of the gap between them. Lightly they clasped hands. 

Jazz tugged Prowl away from the mirror, and unready for it -- being something that could not be delayed until he could see it -- the tactician stumbled into Jazz’s chest. “What--?”

His optics went dark.

“Bedtime,” Jazz smiled at the now-unconscious mech. He’d been gone far too long if Prowl had gotten this last. Taking care of Prowl was one of those jobs most mechs wouldn’t want but… weird power mix or not, a klik in the past or no, but Prowl was… he was the only one who saw Jazz. 

.

.

.


	17. Before Midnight (Masquerade AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prequel to _At Midnight The Dream Ends_. (200 words)

“Stop scowling,” Optimus rumbled as he joined the prince on the mezzanine overlooking the ballroom Below, the herald finished rattling off all the titles of the three mechs entering together. Prowl only scowled harder. It was supposed to be a mystery ball, anonymous. Of course everyone had to have themselves announced like peacocks. 

Hardly anonymous. 

“Prowl,” the king sighed. 

“Don’t tell me I don’t understand,” Prowl snapped back, interrupting. “This is enough of a farce without the intent of an incognito ball being violated as well. Do they think they will impress _me_ with this blatant display of how little they believe the rules apply to them?”

Through the great windows, Prowl saw another carriage pull up and the mech’s servants begin helping their charge climb out. 

“Prowl,” Optimus repeated. “Go down there and enjoy the party.”

Prowl bristled. 

“Don’t make me order you as the king.”

Prowl wasn’t surprised it had come to this. The mech had locked him out of his office, after all. “You might as well.” He turned and marched from the mezzanine. 

He was so busy ignoring the herald’s announcement to the newcomer’s name and rank that he didn’t notice when the proclamation didn’t come.

.

.

.


	18. A Secret History of Sound (Bookstore AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~Megatron’s an idiot~~ Art is always political. Sequel to _It’s A Crush_

Under cherry flowers  
None are utter strangers  
~Issa

Prowl contemplated the verse. It was a curious thing, intriguing. It looked like it was supposed to be a poem or a quote, but it didn’t quite fit the structure of either. Written out by hand on a flimsy placard, then laminated and affixed to the shelf under a row of books, it and others like it were intended to catch a browser’s attention. The employees made them, showing off their recommendations, pointing out obscure treasures, or repeating critic reviews. Prowl had skimmed over dozens of similar placards as he wandered, but he wasn’t sure what this one was supposed to be doing. 

He shook his head and moved on. He was looking for a book to do his Politics of Literature report on. Something he could use to show how works of art are, or became, politicized. Already he had a stack of well known Golden Age classics. He needed to decide on one to read, then research. They were all thick, long stories with clear, well documented histories. Any one of them would impress his teacher with his dedication to the topic and the thoroughness of his research. So far none had really caught his interest. 

It really was an odd little verse. Prowl simply couldn’t let go of it. He’d taken a few different poetry classes and had never seen anything quite like it. He wasn’t sure how to judge it, or if he should.

He wandered away to continue his search through the literature section. He made an aimless circuit through the stacks and found himself back at the no-mech’s land between literature and history where poetry resided, staring at the placard again. Resigned to it now, Prowl set his stack of thick classics aside to finally pull out the book this poem was supposed to be from.

 _Classic Haiku: An Anthology of Poems by Bashō and His Followers_.

“Introduction. The Haiku is the shortest of poems…”

Immediately it was obvious why the poem on the placard had such an odd, short structure. These were not modern poems. This was an annotated translation of much older ones. The combination of lingual drift and the difficulty translating the ambiguous language of poetry had forced the translator to make a choice between the haiku’s familiar, rigid structure and depth of meaning. He had chosen the latter. 

Now more eager to get the poem out of his head than intrigued, Prowl flipped to the page cited on the placard, where he should find out more about that specific verse. What about it had caught the store employee’s attention, and subsequently Prowl’s?

“...But Issa’s verses are essentially pathetic…”

What!?!

Prowl forgot about the stack of classics on the floor and marched up to the front desk. The attending mech was somewhat familiar, another student at the University most likely. He was nodding his head along with a song, but he didn’t hesitate to smile and pull off his headphones when he saw Prowl approach. It was a gorgeous smile.

“Hey… Prowl right?” That brought Prowl up short. Who–? “No worries. I’m Jazz. You took some notes for me for a few days last semester.”

Oh. _Oh._ “Hello. Sorry. Yes, I remember you.”

Jazz’s smile widened, obviously guessing that Prowl had forgotten and fortunately not offended. “You ready to check out?”

Prowl looked at the book of poetry in his hands, and bristled. “No. I came to report that one of the employees had put an inferior poem on the placard that directed me to the book.”

“Inferior?” Jazz leaned over and rested his head on his hands, his smile becoming easy and genuine, where before it had been professional in a way Prowl hadn’t quiet identified until the mech’s demeanor had changed. “How so?” 

Prowl floundered a bit. How so? “Well it says so right here,” he opened the book to the page the poem was on. “The translator, an expert in this sort of pre-Golden Age poetry, says the writer is…” he hesitated to say the word.

“Pathetic,” Jazz finished, having no such compunctions, and Prowl realized that he must have been the employee who wrote the placard. What did he think of Prowl so casually dismissing something he’d found important enough to point out to other people? Fortunately he didn’t take offense at this either. “So we’re talking about the poem’s place in the historical canon, not your personal opinion, right?”

Since Prowl still wasn’t sure what to think about the poem itself, this was an easy answer. “Yes.”

“Alright. Bring the book here and we’ll take a look.”

Wondering just what he’d gotten himself into, Prowl did so, opening the book to the proper page -- in the introductory chapter, rather than among the featured poems -- and laying it flat on the counter. 

“So you gotta look at how he writes about this Issa character,” Jazz started, running his fingers over the words. “Really familiar, yeah? He assumes we all are familiar with Issa, so we can guess he was pretty popular, but if we look at the dates.” He pointed to the vorns Issa had lived, then flipped to the very beginning of the book, where the publisher’s information was printed. Including the original publication date. “Over a thousand vorns. So Issa lives, writes, and dies, and then later some translator comes along and disses his work. What’s happening?” Jazz tapped the publication date.

That was a date Prowl did know. “The Functionalists had come to power just a few decades before.” 

“So Issa writes some poetry that’s – how’d he put it?” Jazz flipped back to the page with the translator’s notes, “‘They are poems on living affairs, dressed in haikai’ and they’re pretty popular. Then Functionalism happens and ancient poems that criticize the class system are being touted as ‘pathetic’.”

That was… interesting. “Haiku aren’t supposed to be political,” he murmured.

“They ain’t supposed to be political _now,”_ Jazz corrected, letting the book flip closed. “In Issa’s time? Dunno, I ain’t a historian. Personally I think the supposed apoliticalness of haiku makes them stodgy, boring, and outdated. It’s a good format, but all they’re good for is describing nature. Photocap’d work just as well.”

“There’s no emotion in a photocap,” Prowl argued. He didn’t know much about poetry, but he did know that emotion was supposed to be the point.

“Plenty of emotion in a photocap,” Jazz argued right back. “But nature photos and haiku’re all just the same emotions: snapshots of a peaceful, calming experience. We all like peace, but it ain’t hard to find… in poetry or otherwise. It’s the uncomfortable emotions that drive change.”

“Such as haiku about the class system.” Well, he’d solved the mystery of why that particular poem had been chosen to represent this book.

“If you think there ain’t politics in saying that one of the most popular poem formats for the last thousand vorns ain’t valid if if they _are_ political, then I think you don’t really understand art.” Jazz waved his hand expansively. “What is art is political. What isn’t art is political.”

“Clearly.” And truthfully, Prowl had never claimed to understand art; his parents had been the ones to insist that he had to uphold their legacy. But this – this once incident of rewriting the artistic canon to fit current politics – was intriguing and, he was starting to believe, more useful to furthering his own understanding than writing yet another analysis of _The First Shot Fired_. “Are you a poet?”

Now Jazz hesitated. “Naw, not really. Dabbled in songwriting, but I’m going to be an engineer.” 

Ah. Prowl recognized that tone and did not press. “I would like to buy this,” he set the book of haiku down on the counter. “Do you have any other recommendations for… uncomfortable poetry?”

Prowl suffered through a long, judging look, and he withstood it with his usual polite neutrality. 

“Here.” Jazz reached under the counter to withdraw a thin, hand-bound pamphlet. He flipped it open and laid it on the counter. “Read it.” Prowl leaned over the slim book and started to do so, his brow furrowing as he took in the strange collection of words. “No…” Jazz pulled the book away. “Not like that. Don’t look at it. _Read it._ Out loud. It’s supposed to be spoken.”

Prowl knew his confusion showed in the baffled tilt of his doors, the offended bristled of his armor, but he obliged. _“Phonemes flounder briquette warmth. T-tethered to seven…_ It’s just nonsense.” 

“It’s supposed to be nonsense. It’s supposed to be _difficult to say.”_ Jazz took the book and fully turned it towards himself so he could read it himself. _”Some will not when by themselves. Some will not when speaking to children and animals. Some will not when they sing.”_ He read the bit at the top of the page, which Prowl had taken to be a sort of extended title for the poem beneath. Jazz said these words like they were supposed to elucidate the whole meaning of the poetry he was obviously so enthusiastic about. 

Prowl still didn’t understand. “Some will not _what?” ___

__With a smile, Jazz flipped over the book, letting Prowl see the short author’s bio printed on the back. “Stutter,” he answered._ _

__._ _

__._ _

__._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The two poetry books mentioned here do exist, and the details and excerpts have only been very lightly edited to fit with the story. 
> 
> _Classic Haiku: An Anthology of Poems by Bashō and His Followers_ was translated and annotated by Asatarō Miyamori. The book from which its contents are drawn, _An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern_ was originally published in 1932. Jazz’s theory is based off of what Asatarō Miyamori really says about Issa’s poems (which really are very clearly, even in translation, criticizing the class system) in the book. The 1930s were a decade of fear in Japan, characterized by the resurgence of right-wing patriotism, the weakening of democratic forces, domestic terrorist violence, and stepped-up military aggression abroad, and it is not unreasonable to me (a total and complete armchair analyst) that the author had an agenda, conscious or unconscious, in attempting to deny those poems the place they seemed to have when he wrote it. 
> 
> The other book is _blert_ by Jordan Scott, a contemporary Canadian poetry who – as Jazz told Prowl – explores the poetics of stuttering. It’s uncomfortable, and personal, and powerful, and I cannot recommend it enough. It’s the book that helped me understand what poetry even is.
> 
> And if obscure books of sound poetry about the experience of living with a disability seem a little daunting, there's also a youtube channel called Ours Poetica (https://www.youtube.com/c/ourspoetica/featured) which is all about poetry.


	19. Pleased to Meet You (Soulmate AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz has already met his sparkmate.

“It says here you’ve already met your sparkmate?” the interviewer confirmed. “But that you’re not living with him yet. Still with your creation cohort?”

“Yeah.” Jazz tried to stay still and not fidget. “My twin’s still looking for his, so…” 

“Dedication. That’s good,” the mech murmured, making notes with his stylus. “We have openings in the back rooms that need filling.” Jazz stopped himself from nodding. That was why he’d applied here. It was a large warehouse company with only a small customer service department. Entry level jobs that didn’t provide much interaction with strangers, or travel opportunities. It was the sort of job no one who was still looking for their sparkmate wanted. “A divorce?”

“Before my sparkmate,” Jazz lied quickly. If the interviewer knew he’d divorced Soundwave, he wouldn’t give him the job. There was… a stigma attached to people who separated from their destined mates, but things just hadn't worked out like in the fairytales. “We tried being a triad and he didn’t get on with my twin.” It was an understatement. Soundwave hadn’t had Words for Ricochet, and as things between the three of them had continued to fall apart, he’d used that to try and get Jazz to make a choice between him and Ricochet. 

“I see.” The interviewer made a final note. “Well, we’ll get you on the payroll and you can start right now.”

“Thank you.”

The interviewer nodded. “Let me call one of your coworkers and we can get your training started…” he pressed the button on his desk. “Prowl?”

Jazz couldn’t hear most of the conversation, but he was too busy trying to get his systems under control. After he and Rico had split from Soundwave his -- their -- life had fallen apart. Losing his job had only been the tip of it. Now it felt like he was finally getting back on track… as long as the manager didn’t find out what had happened. 

The door opened and another mech came in, this one a rather plainly painted Praxan. He glared at the interviewer, then sniffed and turned to Jazz. “So this is what I’m doing with my afternoon instead of finishing the Deserprises order?”

Lightning zapped down Jazz’s spinal struts. Those were-- “Seems we are. Pleased to meet you.”

“Oh!” Now Prowl seemed surprised, though Jazz was sure he was covering it better than he himself had. 

“Splendid!” The interviewer clapped his hands together once. “Now out of my office.”

They vacated his office and stood right outside the door looking at each other. 

“Lightwave has a policy of only hiring mechs that have already met their sparkmate,” the newcomer, Prowl, started. 

“I _have.”_ Jazz spread his hands helplessly. Then he went ahead and showed the Words inscribed on his shoulder. The first things Soundwave had done was hit on him. “But you said what’s on my _twin’s_ back!” Jazz had seen them, traced them, often enough. He probably knew them better than Ricochet! “Did I?”

“Yes,” Prowl answered shortly, turning over his forearm to reveal the words -- _Seems we are. Pleased to meet you._ \-- written there, in Jazz’s handwriting. “This is odd.” 

Jazz just made a rather strangled sound.

.

.

.


	20. I Know You… (Fairytale AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl is looking for his dance partner. Sequel to _At Midnight the Dream Ends_

The visor was dull and lifeless in his hands. He turned it over and over, imagining the sparkle and shine it had had when he first saw it. He ignored Optimus’ sly, knowing look. He still firmly believed that love -- especially love at first sight! -- was not how he should choose his consort, but he was going through an awful lot of trouble to find a mech he wasn’t even going to court. 

Now he wished he had paid more attention to the herald’s announcements at the ball. Perhaps he’d remember… _something_ about how his garden companion had been introduced. 

They pulled up to another overly-pretentious manor and Prowl listlessly followed his entourage and let himself be announced. 

Optimus explained to the residents why they were there, and the two younger mechs crowded in close, eager for their chance to court the prince. One even started talking about how he’d been looking for his visor since the ball, and he and the prince were going to live happily ever after as consorts… Prowl had seen the performance dozens of times already. Whether the visor fit or not, these mechs were not the one who’d walked in the garden with him, the one who had said Prowl shouldn’t consider him for a consort. 

No. This whole thing with trying on the visor was a farce. It was just the only lead he had, and Prowl was desperate. 

He caught movement through the window -- a bird? -- but when he looked fully at it the whatever-it-was was gone. 

He looked back at the house’s residents -- he was sure they had been introduced at some point -- and saw that they had taken everyone’s attention with their competition over the visor. He started easing himself out of the still-open entryway door. It should have occurred to him before, but the mech he was looking for would not come forward to participate in this absurd contest, like Prowl was a prize to be won. 

He was almost amazed when he made a clean escape. 

He hurried around the house and out of sight, ducking under the windows. 

Prowl looked around to see where he’d gotten himself now. A garden, perfectly groomed and manicured. He didn’t hear or see anyone as he made his way deeper into the tangles of cloudy calcite and smoky quartz. Impeccably groomed, but gaudily so, he amended his thought, looking at the topiaries festooned with ribbons, as though the house’s owners could disguise the plain crystals as something fancier. 

He was careful not to wander too far from the house. He would have to reappear in a few minutes, but something about this lonely garden was drawing him onwards.

He stepped through an arch and into a garden of an entirely different sort. This was a kitchen garden, for growing spices and other crystals and metals for cooking. A servant’s garden… and somewhere there should be a servant. 

Unlike the maze-like pleasure garden, there were no private nooks or secret hiding places to search, only squares of raised planting boxes filled with different kinds of crystals. Prowl had never been to the palace kitchen garden, and he was intrigued despite himself. It was so… different! Bright and airy and not pretentious at all. He should-- 

He spotted a pair of shallow bowls set aside near the tools and something glittered within them. He moved closer and looked. 

A cutting of living corundum and one of perfectly clear quartz, each bathed in a solution of energon. It was not a stretch to think that a gardener would know how to root the crystals, but… Prowl picked up the corundum to examine it. This was very like… no, it _was_ the one he he’d given to the mech he’d met at the ball!

“Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t know anyone was here.” Prowl straightened, startled, and looked at another archway leading out of the kitchen garden, and (based on the placement) likely into the house itself. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave…” 

“No, don’t.” Prowl stumbled forward. He looked the servant-mech over. 

He was dirty and sooty. He had not been well cared for. But Prowl could see grace in his frame. The shape of his shoulders and way he held his hands… all familiar. Blue optics. It was the only thing he had seen of his mystery mech’s optics before he’d run, that they were blue. 

Blue and beautiful… but there was no smile. 

Instead he was looking away from Prowl almost fearfully. 

Feeling skittish himself, Prowl tucked the sprig of corundum he still held behind a familiar sensor horn, stroked over a perfect helm to the mech’s chin. Gently he directed his gaze up. Prowl fell into perfect blue optics. “Are you afraid of me?” 

The mech trembled. “No, Sire. But you shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?” 

He stepped away. “I can’t be your consort. I just _can’t.”_

“Because you are a servant?” Prowl wanted to follow, to run his hands over the mech helm again, to hold him close. “I’m not looking for my consort.”

The servant scoffed. “You’re here because you’re infatuated.”

“”Yes.” Prowl could not, would not, deny that. “But infatuation is not a reason to choose a consort, but… I’ve decided it’s a reason to give you a chance. I met every ‘suitable’ mech in the kingdom while I was looking for you, and found them all selfish and vain and boorish. Even if I never found you, I’m certainly not marrying any of them! So if I’m going to start giving my...” Prowl hesitated. Consort Elita had been _insistent_ that compatibility tests were not to be mentioned in any sort of romantic setting but Prowl needed to say it. “My compatibility tests to commoners, I might as well start with you.”

The mech wavered, held out his hand, and Prowl didn’t hesitate to take it. “You’re a romantic fool.”

“Probably.” Slowly, so as not to spook him again, Prowl drew him into that embrace. “I spent so much time searching for you. You don’t have to come with me,” he whispered, once again looking so deeply into the mech’s optics he could drown in them. “But please don’t leave me again without your name.”

The mech bit his lip, and Prowl couldn’t resist. He pulled his love into a kiss. 

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	21. Run Away (Circus AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz wants to live in a bigger world.

Jazz held out his hand into the dark, and squeezed it when Ricochet grabbed it. It was too dark in their hiding spot to see each other, especially with their biolights dimmed as far as they could go, but they couldn’t afford to attract attention. They were supposed to be in their beds, recharging with the rest of their creche, not out here, waiting for the knot of caretakers gossiping and smoking cy-gars to break up.

Beyond the adults was the wall.

There were supposed to be sensors and alarms and such on the wall. To keep the newlings safe. Mentally Jazz scoffed. To keep them _in._ Somehow, though, a colony of metalmites had gotten into the wiring and so the sensors and stuff were off so they could repair it. The adults hadn’t told the newlings this, and Jazz and Ricochet wouldn’t know about the disruption if they hadn’t accidentally overheard the creche overseer yelling about it on the phone. 

Jazz and Ricochet had agreed it was fate. 

Beyond the walls, they could both hear the bright, cheerful music of the circus. They were too young to be allowed to go, but there was stories in the creche’s library. It sounded magical. 

There were other stories too, ones not in the library. Whispered among the newlings, from older to younger, or eavesdropped from the adults… The circus was a world, a society unto itself. They didn’t answer to the townships, and moved around freely. All were welcome as long as they could work. 

If they stayed here, Jazz was sure he and his twin would wither. It was stifling already, and there was nothing to look forward to except a lifetime of long, mindless orns, simply waiting to die. They wanted out. 

It sounded like the perfect place to disappear. An adventure worth going on. And it was fate that the security malfunction had happened when the nomads were within spitting distance of the creche. They just needed to get out first. 

Slowly, the cy-gars went out and mech’s left. Jazz practically trembled as the last one burned for a very long breem longer… and then it too went out. The caretaker wandered away. 

_Go!_

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry. Prowl's out there for them to find somewhere.


	22. Forces of Destiny (Disney AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the _Ark_ gets Disney+.

Jazz vaulted over the couch and landed on the cushion next to Prowl. He was so awesome that he even managed to parry Prowl’s “lightsaber” attack with his own telescoping plastic toy (Wheeljack insisted to Optimus that making them was totally fine as long as he didn’t sell them) and look cool doing it. “Die Sith!”

Prowl just cocked his eyebrow over their locked lightsabers. “A synthetic crystal does not mean I am Sith. There have been Jedi with red blades.” 

“That’s all non-canon Legends nonsense,” Jazz insisted. “Mostly from the TOR game, and character options in an MMO are dubiously canon to begin with anyway.” 

Twisting their plastic blades, Prowl swept Jazz’s legs from beneath him. Jazz tried to compensate, but he went tumbling to the floor. He looked up the length of the glowing red blade and into Prowl’s cool blue optics. “Would a Sith grant you mercy, Jedi?”

“Depends on if this is a fanfic or not,” Jazz responded cheekily. 

Prowl sighed in exasperation and let him up. He returned to his seat, telescoping the toy lightsaber away so that he could place the now unobtrusive handle on the side table next to him.

Jazz got up and made himself comfortable next to him. “So what are we watching today?”

“I haven’t finished season three of Rebels. I am intrigued by Grand Admiral Thrawn.”

Jazz groaned. “I knew you would be. Could we save your nerding out over strategy for private watch time and watch Resistance instead?”

“No.”

“Really?!?” Jazz crossed his arms over his chest and harumphed. “You really have to let go of your sequel-era grudge at _some_ point.”

“I do not,” Prowl refuted, turning on the giant flatscreen and selecting the Disney+ app. “I am willing to negotiate a different viewing option, but I will not watch anything taking place in that era.” 

“I guess the _Forces of Destiny_ shorts are out then.” Not _all_ of those were sequel era, but enough of them were that Jazz would have bet real money the answer was--

“You are correct.”

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	23. Dance With Me (Dance AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> … Honestly this probably takes place in the same ‘verse _Forces of Destiny._ Don't consider it a sequel though.

“Where’s Jazz?” Prowl asked as he walked into the _Ark’s_ common room. Those mechs who had gathered around the couch already just gave him blank looks. 

Of course Jazz was the master of going unseen when he wished, but he’d promised he’d arranged for something special for Prowl tonight when they watched the Dancing With the Stars season premier. It was disappointing that Jazz wasn’t here. And it wasn’t like Prowl hadn’t made an effort to track him down, but Jazz was nowhere to be found. 

Prowl sighed and pulled a chair over to where the TV was set up. 

He idly watched the opening theatrics while he worked on next month’s duty schedule. He enjoyed the dancing, but Jazz was the expert. He’d been a performer of some stripe before the war (though Prowl had never found out exactly what he’d done), and he’d thrown himself into various music and dance cultures with gusto. It was his commentary that usually kept the contest interesting. 

He didn’t even rouse much when they started introducing the contestants. As much as the Autobots tended to like Earth’s pop culture, most of it tended to just go over their heads. As a result, the mechs watching had much more investment in the recurring dance trainers than in the various “stars”, whom they mostly didn’t recognize. 

“... And finally Jenna Johnson and--”

“Is that Jazz!?!” Bumblebee exclaimed and Prowl’s optics whipped up from his datapad to the flatscreen on the wall.

Sure enough, a sporty porsche was dramatically inching its way onto the dancefloor, flashing his headlights happily. The passenger side door opened, letting the professional dancer, dressed in a gold dress that was more modest than the other female pros out. 

“-- her partner for this season, Autobot Jazz!” Erin Andrews finished dramatically as Jazz transformed, Jenna perched in his hand in a manner that had to have been practiced. 

Fortunately, Prowl thought, the stage lights were high enough that he didn’t hit his head. That would have been embarrassing. 

He noticed that he himself had stood up, flaring his doors in shock and outrage. Really?!?!

“So Mister, uh, Jazz…” Tom Bergeron said, walking up to Jazz as he crouched down to put Jenna down. 

“Just Jazz,” he corrected smoothly. He sparkled under the lights. “Ain’t a ‘mister’ anything.” 

“Right. Well, it’s fantastic to have you here on the show but I’m sure we’re all wondering just how this is going to work! Don’t you need a partner you’re own, um, size?” 

“Sure do.” Jazz grinned directly into the camera. “What do you say Prowl? Wanna come dance with me?”

Prowl opened up a commline immediately. _You’re going to be scrubbing the_ Ark’s _exterior for a decade for this!_

Spontaneously, or so it seemed to everyone on the set, Jazz fell over laughing. 

.

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	24. The List (Cursed AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl is forever cursed. Sequel to _Dance With Me_.

Prowl paced down the line of Autobots standing at attention outside the _Ark’s_ entrance. He glared at each one that he passed, doors held high. He noted each of their reactions to his scrutiny. They ranged from cowed to defiant, but nothing outside the previously observed range of each individual. No surprises here. Which meant none of them would learn their lessons. Those easily cowed by him had proven that they might have good intentions, but they were thoughtless, easily excited, and did not subject to peer pressure. He would see them again. Those who were defiant were so because they knew that (however much he might like to) Prowl would not hand out corporal punishments for anything less than treason.

And then there was the mech at the end of the line. 

Prowl already had a headache. Time to get on with this then. He turned and faced them again. “I assume I do not have to tell each of you why you are here.” Down the line, shoulders hunched; seeing them gave Prowl a curl of pleasure. 

“Sideswipe and Sunstreaker,” he called briskly. Sideswipe slouched forward, while Sunstreaker just bristled aggressively. “The two of you are going to help clean up the mess you two made in the commissary, and then report to the brig for a month of further detainment.” Being forced to sit out any skirmishes that happened while they were in lock up would be a worse punishment to them than lock up itself, but the alternative was letting the behavior slide. They’d already been given therapy in case they were reacting to some sort of deep-set trauma or a psychological need to act out. As far as Prowl was concerned, they did all of this purely out of a desire to make him suffer. “Dismissed.”

They sauntered back into the _Ark_ fully unaffected by their punishments. 

And speaking of therapy. “Mirage and Cliffjumper.” 

Mirage stepped forward, prim and proper and practically dripping with unconcerned arrogance. Cliffjumper tried to protest… actually Prowl wasn’t exactly sure. The list of Cliffjumper’s grievances with everything was endless, and he silenced the red minibot with a glare before the tirade could really get rolling. “The two of you will be attending weekly sessions with Smokescreen.” Both of them bristled, though Mirage was more subtle about it. “Together.” That garnered Prowl a pair of outraged squawks, which he spoke right over. “For the foreseeable future.” Couples therapy would hopefully do them some good. Primus knew Prowl had tried everything else. “Dismissed.” 

Cliffjumper tried again to protest, but Prowl made a sharp gesture to stop him. “Let me rephrase: get out of my sight.”

That sent the pair scurrying back into the relative safety of… wherever in the _Ark_ those two felt safe.

Prowl moved on down the line. “Smokescreen.”

“Yeah,” the inveterate gambler groused back. “I know. I’ll escort myself down to the brig… after I make a stop at my office to pick up some things,” he bargained. “I’m going to need to reread some things if I’m going to be dealing with those two.” 

Prowl frowned but just gestured for him to get going.

And finally…

Jazz grinned at him when they came face to face. “I ain’t sorry.” 

“I did not believe you were.”

“And last night was live, so you can’t lock me up without upsettin’ a lotta people.” 

“I am aware.” Prowl simply unsubspaced the crate he’d gone down to the dental supply provider to pick up special. It dropped between them and the top flaps swung open, letting a few of the miniscule, individually wrapped toothbrushes skitter out. “You will be cleaning the _Ark_ , as I said you would.”

“But we got dance practice!”

“Then I suggest you hurry,” Prowl stated ruthlessly. Meanwhile he was going to speak with Jenna Johnson about their routine for next week. Of course he wouldn’t _sabotage_ their chances, but he wouldn’t cry if he and Jazz flunked out of the first round and he only had to deal with this disruption in his schedule once. 

.

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	25. I Got Your Letter (Pen Pal AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They finally meet.

“What is that? A _letter?”_ Prowl’s doorwings stiffened and flared at the snide voice. “Who does that anymore?”

The angry retort he had queued up died when he actually turned and saw the mech heckling him. Rather than mocking, the mech was pleased and teasing and more importantly he looked exactly like the photograph he’d received with his last letter. “Jazz?”

Jazz grinned. “The one and only.” 

“Statistically the likelihood of there being someone else with the same name--”

“Is pretty high,” Jazz interrupted. He slung the heavy survival pack off of his back and rested it under the table as he took the seat across from him. “I know. But you said this place had some epic pastries and I could go for some fuel right about now.”

“You only got in today?” Prowl asked in surprise while he flagged down the waiter. When Jazz had sent him the letter saying he was hiking across the Tri-Torus states and could meet in Praxus today, where’s a good place? Prowl had thought Jazz would have hiked in yesterday, rested, and would leave again later this week. 

Jazz just shrugged, unperturbed. “Doing this trip on a budget, and that budget don’t have room in it for more than one night in a swanky Praxan hotel. What do you suggest?”

Right. Of course. It wasn’t like Prowl didn’t understand making and sticking to a budget. 

Still, as he ordered a gel-stuffed oil cake for each of them, the thought nagged. Would Jazz have even bothered to come into the city at all if it weren’t to meet with him?

“You could stay with me for a couple of nights,” Prowl offered as the server took their order back to the kitchen. “Make sure you’re rested up for the next leg of your hike.”

Jazz smiled. “I don’t want to impose.”

“I’m offering.” If he’d known that staying in the city during his trip was prohibitively expensive for his friend, he would have made the offer in his letter, when he’d expressed his enthusiasm over finally, after years of letters, getting to meet and suggested this place. “If your schedule allows, I would like a few extra days with my friend.”

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	26. Dark Promise (Pirate AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sea makes its promises, but only keeps them for its favorites.

The reefs had made just getting here a harrowing experience. His ships were still out to the east, anchored there. He’d had to swim the final distance, through crystal and rock and the foamy white water of the waves battering him. He hadn’t climbed up onto this strange island unscathed. The sea had left its mark.

Commander of the Prime’s Royal Navy, Prowl of Praxus, stood at the edge of the so-called Great Blue Hole. A vertical sea cave, or so he’d been told. The perfectly round entrance had been built up into a ring of reefs that cut it off from the rest of the ocean, while the rest plunged into the deep like a chimney. The water was clear as glass, but the abyss within the hole was as dark as the night sky. 

Prowl contemplated the hole, and the coin in his hand. Ancient gold. Cursed gold. Megatronus’ treasure… Even a single piece like this would be priceless to the right buyer, and with his political connections he could easily find that buyer. He could buy himself… anything. Fame, any government position he wanted short of Prime or Protector, a leisurely retirement. He could practically see that life scroll out in front of him. A family. A home. Everything Prowl had never had.

He closed his optics and took that life into his spark. Acknowledged it. Explored its shape, it’s possibilities. He had no delusions about how much he _wanted_ that life. And he could have it. It was real, held right here in his hand. 

Then he held the coin and that life both out over the abyss and tipped his palm to let it fall in. Gone now. Forever. 

That was the ritual, or so he’d been told. To realize that everything he had ever wanted was right in his hands, and then sacrifice it, knowingly and without recourse. He was going to feel real stupid if this didn’t work. 

The sky darkened. Lightning cracked across the distance. Storm seekers circled and cawed like Flesh Foragers did over land.

The water within the Great Blue Hole. 

_Something_ had answered Prowl’s sacrifice. A mass of tentacles and biolights writhed up to the surface, reaching and slithering and twining together until Prowl had to look away from the grotesque form and… 

A mech stepped forward across the water. 

He came to Prowl, but his feet did not leave the angry, foam at the water’s edge. Prowl had to look up, because if he looked down at the mech’s feet, his processor twisted within his helm trying to make sense of the transition between horror of the deep to mortal disguise. 

The thing he had summoned smiled at him with a mouth full of sharkticon teeth. 

“It’s been a long time,” a siren’s voice sang, and Prowl felt his own breath quicken in suppressed excitement, “since someone has sacrificed so much to me with a single coin.” 

“I hope it was worth it,” Prowl snapped, flaring his doorwings. To anyone else it might have been a threat. Prowl had certainly said it as a threat often enough. But he couldn't threaten this being. It was beyond his reach. 

As such, the being laughed, and Prowl winced. He could hear hurricanes, the crash of waves against the shore, poisonous bites, blood frenzy in that laugh. “Oh, you are the judge of that,” the creature hissed when he was done. “Never I. But why don’t you tell me what was _worth_ throwing that life away anyway?”

“I need you to withdraw your favor from the pirate fleet.”

The creature laughed again. Eels slithered through Prowl’s audios. “Oh, dear, dear Prowl… The pirate fleet doesn’t have my favor. You don’t have any disfavor for me to withdraw either. But they have love, and love makes mechs daring and on my waters, courage brings either rewards or death.” This time the teeth were the needle-sharp fangs of deep-sea fish when he smiled, and Prowl had to be careful not to look between them, or else he could see inside the being’s mouth and into the endless, dark abyss from which it was made. “You’re just timid. You don’t love me.” 

Prowl remembered years of watching the shore before he finally went to sea. The longing he’d felt then. He’d never wanted anything more than the waves. “I do.” 

“Prove it,” the being challenged. “Prove it and you will be any pirate’s equal upon the sea. Ship against ship. Sailor against sailor. And we will see whose legacy prevails.”

Prove it? Prowl looked at the being. The “mech” stood there challengingly. His plating was still smooth and bright, but the edges were murky. The disguise wouldn’t hold. Prowl could see the violence of the storm, the pain of slow starvation, and the promise only of silence in the freezing deep as fish gnawed on his bones, all wrapped up in a thinner and thinner outer plating. Something like a whale, but with wide, flat optics that stared at him like the moon swam through the being and looked out of his shoulder at him. How could he prove anything to that?

How could he love that?

But the sea as he’d seen it as a youngling was still there, wasn’t it? The wide open expanse of sparkling water, the calm breeze, the joy at seeing a storm in all its beautiful ferocity… Freedom. Such a small thing, tiny parts of the being, but Prowl saw them as the thin disguise broke. The sun sparkled in the “mech’s” visor. He’d already given his whole future to the sea, hadn’t he?

Prowl stepped into the surf and kissed a mouth full of alien teeth. Tasted salt and sand and rot and let himself fall into the forever-expanse under the sun. 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone reading this remembers my Mermaid response from AUgust a few years ago... apparently Jazz is the endless temptation and terror of the sea and Prowl just can't help but kiss that. At least this time Jazz _probably_ didn't kill and eat him immediately. XD


	27. Duality (Mythology AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So… Mythological history is fun. Apparently Aphrodite is an evolution of Ishtar. Badaft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short. I’m not feeling well today.

“You stole my gig.” 

Prowl looked up from the battlefield. A would-be hero twitched on the end of his spear. He could have had a destiny as a hero who would have been remembered for centuries, if he hadn't had the misfortune to run into the god of War’s spear as a strapping young soldier. Prowl liked strapping young soldiers, he really did, but he wasn’t going to spare their lives. 

A point of light appeared and grew until it outlined the form of another mech. Just the form, mind. Because the skimpily armored racing frame was no mech. 

But then neither was Prowl. “You are not supposed to be here.”

“Pfft!” Jazz, god of carnal lust and love, waved his hand negligently. Despite them both standing there -- and Jazz practically unprotected from enemy spears -- they were ignored. “Only because it makes you-gods uncomfortable. I can totally fight!”

“Love has no place on the battlefield,” Prowl stated. The Prime had declared it so. 

“Only because you _stole my gig.”_ Jazz hissed. “‘God of war’. Pssh-aw. Who the hell has so much war that they need an _entire_ god dedicated to it. Prime doesn’t know the first thing about _why_ people fight.”

“It was not my decision.” Prowl turned back to the battlefield. There were more enemies to kill. 

“At least marry me!”

Prowl scoffed. “How many of your husbands did you kill before coming here? No.” 

Jazz pouted. It, like everything about him, was unfairly attractive. “Okay. I guess it’s hate sex time.”

Prowl considered that, then acquiesced. 

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	28. Are We There Yet? (Road Trip AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sooo… You realize they’re cars, right? All of their trips are road trips.

_”Bulkhead! I needed that!”_

_”Sorry!”_

_”As you can see,”_ Optimus Prime continued over the rather fuzzy transmission. _”We cannot activate the space bridge to bring you home at this time. You will have to make your own way home._

“You mean drive,” Prowl stated flatly, unamused by the antics going on between Bulkhead and Ratchet behind Prime, within view of the communication’s camera pickup. The most violent portions were fuzzed out by static, but his tacsuite was up to the task of reconstructing the scuffle blow by blow. “From New York to Arizona.”

_“Indeed I do. Make haste. We need you here, but do not reveal to the humans your presence.”_

“Woohoo! Road Trip!” Jazz pumped his fist, and Prowl rolled his optics as the transmission, shaky as it had been, finally failed. 

“It was bad enough being stuck in a spaceship with you,” Prowl grumbled, glaring at the remains of the spaceship in question. 

“And while _you_ were arguing with the bossbot,” Jazz crowed, holding out his own communicator, “about not being able to use the spacebridge, _I _got us access to the planet’s information networks, found us an optimal route to take, downloaded us the specs for some disguises,” two vehicles appeared in the holofield, “made us some smoking hot avatars,” the image changed to two humans, “aaaaaand got us a list of roadside attractions between here and there. Say ‘you’re welcome, Jazz’.”__

__“Good work.”_ _

__“Close enough.” Jazz shrugged. He hit the button to short beam the information Prowl would need to him. He stretched, activating his transformation matrix and shifting into his new, sleek Earth form. He really did like the stripes. His integrated holoprojector summoned up the image of the very nice looking human he’d chosen to imitate. Coolness._ _

__Prowl, meanwhile, had followed his specs well enough, but had chosen a very boring basic white paint job. He probably though he looked inconspicuous like that._ _

__He was probably right, but there was a time and a place for inconspicuous and choosing your own skin really wasn’t it. Not that there was anything Jazz could do to change his mind about that._ _

__“Alright Niagara Falls State Park here we come!” Jazz revved his engine._ _

__“No! That’s entirely the wrong _way.”_ Prowl growled. “No ‘attractions’. We need to get to Prime and the others!”_ _

__“Party pooper. How about we swing by D.C just to scope the place out?”_ _

__“No!”_ _

__“It’s called ‘scouting’!”_ _

__“It’s called ‘being a pain in the aft’!”_ _

__“How about--?”_ _

__“No!”_ _

__“Look! I downloaded a book of road games we could play!”_ _

__“Jazz!”_ _

__._ _

__._ _

__._ _


	29. Battle of the Bands (Band AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No summary this time. Wow… D&D sure ran late this week.

“What was _that?”_ Jazz waved his arms around wildly while Prowl just looked at him placidly. 

“Tones calculated to be the most mathematically pleasing to the human ear,” he responded, not sure what the problem was. He’d made good money writing music on Cybertron, and with the vast library of sound clips available to them here on earth, it hadn’t been difficult to put together a recording of his first piece of human music. Well, technically his second, but since Blaster had warned him when he’d gone to ask him to render it that some of the pitches were outside human hearing ranges, and those volumes could be harmful, Prowl had rewritten it. 

“Electric tones, church bells, crickets and _dolphin sonar!?!?!”_ Jazz was still waving his arms around. _**”Really!?!?!”**_

“Yes…” Prowl still wasn’t sure what Jazz was upset about. 

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	30. Walk the Line (Roommates AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Ark_ badly needs repairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, but at least this year I actually managed to make them roommates for the roommates prompt. XD

“Did you do this last time you were assigned a berth in the barracks?” Prowl asked curiously, watching Jazz as he drew a line down the middle of their new quarters with the “duct” tape. He was even extending it up onto the walls and across the ceiling, dividing the room into exactly half. It was probably unnecessary, especially since the room assignments were (hopefully) temporary and the rest of the officers’ quarters across the hall would be repaired swiftly. 

“Nope,” Jazz popped the “P” sound loudly. “I got the idea from that show Spike hooked Bumblebee on. I don’t want you cleaning or organizing my things.”

“You do not currently have any ‘things’.” 

“But I will.” Jazz tore off the piece of tape and stuck down the end when it started getting unwieldy. Then he restarted his line with a new piece from his roll. “So will you.”

Prowl shrugged noncommittally. He’d never really been into “things”. 

“Don’t shrug at me, mister,” Jazz scolded without actually looking up at Prowl. “I know you. As soon as we settle in you’re going to see if any of the crystal samples are viable, and if they aren’t, you’re going to adopt as many local flora as Hound will and I will _not,”_ Jazz finished up his line and tore off the end for emphasis, “be blamed when you have issues.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Jazz got up and stretched. Then examined his handiwork. “Just stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine and we won’t ever have to find out.” 

Prowl also examined the line curiously, and wondered at his own sudden impulse to put his toe across it to see what Jazz would do.

.

.

.


	31. Summer (Dealer’s Choice - Fuzzy!Dragonformers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cybertron has a short, busy summer…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place in a ‘verse made for a story Riz and I are still working on, combining dragonformers, my version of Cybertron with comet-like seasons, WandersUnderStarlight Long Patrol (which was inspired by a comet!Cybertron snippet I had written), and a little bit of a barbarian au. 
> 
> And don't worry, Jazz is around.

Prowl stuck his tongue out, tasting the air at the entrance of the cave where his clan sheltered for the summer. He mostly tasted lead, from the stream of melted lead that flowed just a short distance from the cave, but there were also strong hints of copper, iron, and gold and he used his comsuite to send a message to the tribe’s egg-makers that the more useful metals had been exposed and were harvestable. It was only a few breems after twilight, and still the ground was still soft and squishy, partially melted in some places. He couldn’t wait until it had cooled, though. He had an errand. He launched himself out, spreading his wings to glide out of the cave and into the steamy, overheated night.

Absolutely everything that could evaporate into a gas had by now. Even things like acetone, ethylene glycol, turpentine, and most of the oils that pooled on the surface during the spring and fall had all vaporized to create a thick, heavy atmosphere that was easy to fly in, but not necessarily pleasant. Most of the tribe didn’t come out more than a few orns in the summer at all. Prowl and a few others couldn’t afford to stay in. 

He wasn’t the first to venture out of the cave this night, though. Prowl had a busy summer, yes, but not as busy as Wheeljack and the tribe’s other engineers, tasked with keeping the solar energon harvesters from breaking down while collecting summer’s perilous bounty. Prowl dipped his wings in greeting, then dove into a lazy spiral that brought him down to the solar collectors Wheeljack was working on. 

“I already have your share pulled from this orn’s harvest,” Wheeljack said as Prowl wove his way through the forest of solar panels. His horns lit up brightly as he talked, flashing hues of pink and yellow that helped him communicate with other engineer dragons across fields of collectors and in cramped tunnels. Usually he was a green and white dragon, but Prowl could tell tending the solar collectors was taking its toll. Wheeljack's colors were faded and corroded from so much flying in the astringent, summer clouds.

“My thanks,” Prowl said solemnly. He licked the thick mane of soft plastic fur around Wheeljack’s face, combing melt-induced tangles and helping him disperse a bit of the heat. The other dragon purrled in pleasure and gratitude for the help. Wheeljack’s fur was always a thick matted layer of melting tangles. He was the only dragon Prowl knew who might be served by thinning some of the plastic strands, but as much as they were a nuisance now he would be grateful for them when it came time to hibernate through the long winter. 

Wheeljack returned the grooming gesture, licking down Prowl’s back and over his wings with his own barbed tongue, combing and cooling the fur. Prowl’s coat was even thicker and more unpleasant to deal with during the summer than Wheeljack’s was. It made him reluctant to come out at all during the burning summers, when Cybertron was closest to its star, but he braved the discomfort. Everyone in the tribe had a job, one that took up all of the spring, summer, and fall. Some were engineers. Others did nothing but harvest energon and other materials. Others cared for the springtime hatchlings until they apprenticed themselves to an older dragon. Still others were busy building next year’s eggs. 

Everyone was, in their own way, preparing for winter hibernation. 

So it was with some small amount of reluctance that Prowl shook off Wheeljack and brought their grooming to an end. “Thank you again.”

“No problem.” Wheeljack flashed his teeth as he smiled. “Long Patrollers get first pick.” His tone made it sound like a joke, but it wasn’t. It was a tenet. 

Prowl nodded acknowledgement and scooped up the bottled energon and flew off with it.

When he was sure he was out of sight of Wheeljack or any other observers from the caves, he changed direction, zig zagging across the landscape. The caching spots were secret, almost sacred, and so he did everything he could to obscure his path through Cybertron’s still-sweltering night. 

Finding the cache, Prowl buried his energon deep enough in the rock that it’d stay cool, he took off again, this time toward the nearest, and well-known, nesting site.

Right now, this one was just a rocky depression on the surface. The gallium compound that would fill the pool in the winter was not here, and some sort of steam hissed out from deeper in the rock. 

Unpleasant, but Prowl went right up to it. Someone had messed up his arrangement of rocks in the depression when they had retrieved the eggs to be sparked. Grumbling to himself, Prowl got to work arranging and rearranging the rocks and sand. He built up one side of the future-pool into a sandy bank and dug out the other to create a deeper, contoured lounging spot. Everything needed to be perfect. 

When it was, Prowl checked the door. Right now it was a door to nowhere, placed on a flat plane, but later, when this whole area was covered in ice, it would be crucial. The airlock hissed when he closed it, indicating a leak, and Prowl put it on his list of things to have fixed during the fall. Prowl tasted the air to test the temperature again, then he tested that reading against the thermometer hanging from a chain around his neck and buried in his fur. He wouldn’t have the thermometer later, in the winter, because it would be frozen, but it was good to have an exact reading right now. 

Now, night had truly fallen. Though still hot enough to boil almost anything, things had cooled to an acceptable temperature. More importantly, it wasn’t going to get cooler until the planet had moved away from the sun again. 

That made it the right time to check on the thermoluminescent rocks laid out around the nesting site. Right now they were quite spread out, but Prowl could still see their glow. Glowing meant expending the radiation he had laid them out here to capture. There were cool places to stash them, but Prowl just checked that they were all working, all glowing at the right brightness for the current temperature. That was good. That meant these were all still good to be used for another year to light and monitor the nest site. When summer started turning to fall, and they no longer had as much radiation to charge them with, Prowl would hide them someplace cool until the nests were set up, right before hibernation, to keep them from losing light during the relative warmth of autumn.

This was why there were so few Long Patrollers in the clan. It took more than just a thick coat of fur and a heavy resistance to loneliness. It required training to cache the energon in its secret spots, expertise to read charge and read the thermoluminescent monitoring rocks, hardiness and luck… was not the oldest of the clan’s Long Patrollers, but he was one of the most successful. Of course he’d lost nests, but very few over his career. 

And right now he had three more nests to prepare, and cache, and a very short summer in which to do it all. Deciding to move some of the energon he’d gotten this orn to a different nesting site, Prowl took off and flew in circles to make sure no one was nearby, before flying back to the cache. 

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all she wrote, folks! Until next time!

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * "<3" as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> I always reply to comments, often with just an expression of thanks or happiness. I will always answer questions, though if the answer is spoilery I will simply say “no spoilers”. And while I absolutely love long threads and discussion, I may not reply to extremely long threads due to time constraints.
> 
> If you don't want a reply, for any reason, just put a 'whisper' up front or at the end, and I will simply and quietly appreciate your comment without responding.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [CaféLoveSong](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898929) by [Magnolia_in_black_Velvet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet/pseuds/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet)




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